


Dragon Age (Season 7)

by Nudeviking



Series: Dragon Age [8]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-16 15:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5830864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nudeviking/pseuds/Nudeviking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Director's Commentary: I thought it was lame that there didn't seem to be anyway to execute Samson. I think exile was probably the closest but I didn't really trust him to stay exiled so I gave him to Cullen. There will be a brief break from the main plot while I do some DLC so that's what's coming up.</p>
        </blockquote>





	1. Dragon Age – S07E01 – The Trial of the Age

Sideboob, the witch of the wilds, disappeared into another mirror a short distance up ahead, followed shortly thereafter by Sara and Cassandra. Solas watched them all vanish with a scowl upon his face and the jumped through, not waiting for the Inquisitor to go through first. How could that stupid girl have allowed a shemlan witch to take the power contained within the Well of Sorrows for herself?  
  
A moment later Solas found himself in a broom closet somewhere within the Skyhold Dream Castle with that stupid witch, stupid Sara, who was barely even an elf, Cassandra who he had no particular beef with, and the Inquisitor who was fast becoming the absolute worst. It was one thing for her to bring the Grey Wardens into the Inquisition, he could maybe even overlook her doing whatever it was she did with Sara, but to defile the Temple of Mythral, kill a bunch of ancient elves, and let Sideboob, of all people, take the power of the Well of Sorrows? That was a bridge too far. Solas did not even wait for wait for Lydia to stand up from the spill she’d taken when she popped out of the eluvian before he left the room.  
  
“What the f is his problem?” Cassandra asked after Solas had stormed out of the room.  
  
“Who the hell knows? He’s probably just pissed off that we didn’t do push puzzle rituals in that Temple…and that Sideboob got the ultimate elf power instead of him,” Lydia replied, “Anyway fuck that guy.”  
  
“Yes, yes…fuck that guy. Lady Inquisitor you and I have things we must discuss with your board of advisors,” Sideboob said, “Come, time is somewhat of the essence for I do not believe that Coprophilia. You two can go eat lunch or something.”  
  
Lydia sighed, she knew Sideboob was right, but she still would have rather gone and hung out on the roof with Sara rather than discuss serious issues about Coprophilia with Leliana and Sideboob, let alone Cullen. Lydia had pretty much avoided him since he randomly declared his love for her but that was going to be a lot harder to do now that everyone was back in the Skyhold Dream Castle.  
  
“Alright, let’s go,” she said to Sideboob and then turned and told Sara, “Let’s get some lunch together when this is all done okay?”  
  
Sara smirked, “Yeah sure thing Buckles. 'Lunch.'”  
  
**Commercial Break**  
  
  
Lydia stood before Josie, Cullen and Leliana in the warroom. She had just finished giving her report on the events that had taken place in the Temple of Mythral and the room had fallen silent. Everyone present stared at her in apparent shock at what they had heard.  
  
It was Leliana who spoke first asking with disbelief,, “So you are telling us that Coprophilia can revive like a goddamn archdemon? That is incredibly fucked up! That’s going to make him pretty much impossible to kill for good isn’t it?”  
  
"Wait a second, he's pretty much invincible now? Well that's great...next you'll tell us that when he farts he can cause the sun to explode," Cullen said sarcastically.  
  
"I wouldn't be surprised if that was actually true," Lydia answered back with the slightest hint of sarcasm.  
  
Sideboob cleared her throat and said, "Since I went for a dip within its waters, the well has revealed unto me many fabulous secrets. Twill still take some time before I can make sense of them all, but I am rather certain I now know Coprophilia's weakness. Have any of you read Harry Potter in its entirety?"  
  
"No," said Cullen as Leliana and Lydia each shook their head "no."  
  
"You haven't?" Josephine asked in shock, "I've read them all at least a dozen times! They are so good!"  
  
"Very well Antivan perhaps you will be able to help me explain then," Sideboob said, "The reason Coprophilia appears to be invincible is because he possess a horacrux...his dragon!"  
  
Josephine clapped her hand over her mouth in shock and then asked, "Can you be certain he just has one? In the novels He Who Must Not Be Named had seven horacruxes."  
  
The witch laughed, "Silly child. True magic does not work in that fashion. An individual could not possess more than a single horacrux."  
  
All this talk of horacruxes was most confusing. Lydia scratched the back of her head and asked the question she was sure Cullen and Leliana wanted to ask as well, "So what's a horacrux?"  
  
"A horacrux is a vessel that contains within it a potion of a wizard's soul," Sideboob said, "They can be anything...a necklace, a tome, a common cup, but as such things can be taken from a wizard very easily, some wizards prefer something slightly more powerful to serve as their horacruxes."  
  
"Like a dragon..." Cullen said, finishing the sentence.  
  
"This is literally the first time I've heard of these horacrux deals. Why don't more wizards have them?" Lydia asked, "They seem like a pretty good deal. I mean not being able to die certainly must have its advantages."  
  
"If you had read Harry Potter you would know that it is because to create a horacrux one must complete a number of vile blood magic rituals! Only the wickedest fiends would ever even consider such an undertaking!" Josephine exclaimed and then looked to Sideboob who nodded in agreement.  
  
"In this book of yours how did they wreck the horacruxes Josie?" Lydia asked.  
  
Josephine sighed in annoyance and began, "Well most of the horacruxes in the books were just objects...goblets and rings and things that could be destroy with magical weapons. There was only one living horacrux, a monstrous snake if you can believe such a thing. The snake was killed by a previously fat comic relief character named Neville who became super tough and handsome in the last book. He cut the snake's head off with a magic sword."  
  
"Do we have a Neville?" Lydia asked.  
  
"I once knew a rather ludicrous dwarf by the name of Sandol who sort of matches that description," Leliana said, "Perhaps he can kill the horacrux dragon for us."  
  
"Enchantment-Enchantment?!" Sideboob asked in surprise, "Twill not require his services for I know of another way to slay the dragon but I would like to speak of it to the Inquisitor privately first. Lady Trevelyn come speak to me in the garden at your earliest convenience for I fear Coprophilia may strike at us here in Skyhold soon as we have taken from him all other options." Sideboob then curtsied and took her leave.  
  
As soon as the door shut Josephine said, "Seriously Lydia what did you read when you were in middle school and high school? I mean Cullen and Leliana are old so I can understand them not reading it but you are my age...I thought everyone our age read Harry Potter."  
  
"I read Rubyfruit Jungle, among other things," Lydia said, "Anyway is there anything else to discuss beyond what books I did or didn't read when I was 14 let me know otherwise I'm going to go get drunk and make out with Sara."  
  
"As you know, after the battle at the Temple, Samson was captured. He is en route here as we speak, under heavy guard," Leliana said, "He should arrive early tomorrow. I think it would be best to put him on trial and render a verdict for him as soon as possible. We lost a lot of men and women in the battle in the Arbor Wilds and I think that showing that those losses were for something with a big trial will be good for morale."  
  
Lydia nodded, "I agree. Schedule it for tomorrow afternoon."  
  
"Josephine, since I have some history with Samson could I serve as a special guest referee for this trial?" asked Cullen.  
  
"Yeah sure," Josephine replied.  
  
"Thank you."  
  
"Okay, anything else?" Lydia asked, "If not I'm off to do inappropriate things with my girlfriend."  
  
"Uhh...there is one thing," Cullen said, "But it's hardly worth your time...some 'researcher' from the college in Val Royal studying the last Inquisitor's last days out in the Frostfang Basin or some shit. He's having trouble with the Avaar out there and has requested Inquisition assistance. Like I said stupid nonsense that's hardly worth your time..."  
  
But Lydia wasn't having it. "That's precisely the kind of nonsense that's worth my time! What if that last Inquisitor had a magic sword or something that our Neville needs to kill that horacrux dragon? We're going to the Frostfang Basin right after Samson's trial, but first I get drunk and make out with Sara...which is what I'm going to do right now. Smell ya later dudes."  
  
Lydia peaced out and headed out of war room. Almost as soon as she was gone Leliana turned to Josephine and said, "You know she had a crush on you before right? I sometimes think we'd have a lot fewer problems with getting things done in a timely and rational manner if you'd realized she liked you and she was now dating you instead of Sara."  
  
Josephine blushed slightly and said, "As difficult as Sara can be they make a cute couple and they seem happy together. You can't really think Sara's influence to be entirely bad."  
  
"Josie's right. Sara's not terrible and we probably wouldn't have an official jester to the Inquisition if they weren't a couple," Cullen said with a smirk, "That verdict had 'Sara will think this is funny,' written all over it."  
  
Leliana sighed, "I know. I just wish sometimes Lydia took her responsibilities more seriously. Sara can sometimes be a distraction from what Lydia needs to do. I mean Sideboob not ten minutes ago told Lydia to go talk to her about how to defeat Coprophilia and his dragon once and for all, and what does she do? Runs off to dump baskets of rose petals off the roof or steal Vivian's real cool hat or engage in some other farcical mischief."  
  
Cullen interjected, "Maybe it's not too late to convince Lydia to spend her time with someone a tad more serious. Leliana you don't think perhaps Lydia would consider dating me instead do you?"  
  
Leliana and Josephine both started laughing, and Leliana said, "Cullen, she and Sara are super gay. Like you'd probably have an easier time convincing Solas to date you than you would convincing Lydia to go out with you."  
  
"But she's always so nice to me..."  
  
"Because she likes you Cullen," Josephine said and then added, "as a friend."  
  
The words, "as a friend," seemed to hang in the air, like a heavy fog, and Cullen's jaw dropped. "Have I been cursed, my heart banished to the Friendzone that the mages of Fe'dora say exists somewhere beyond the Fade? How is this possible? I didn't think Lydia even liked magic, let alone knew how to cast such complex spells and cantrips..."  
  
Leliana and Josephine simultaneously facepalmed.  
  
**Commercial Break**  
  
  
"Buckles! What a brilliant day yeah?" Sara said as Lydia entered the loft above the brew pub that Sara called her room.  
  
A look of confusion appeared on Lydia's face. "That's not really the reaction I expected from you. I mean after we went to court in Orleans you almost accidentally hit me with a knife, and after we went in the Fade you intentionally tried to hit me in the face with an astrolabe. I kind of expected that after the shit that went down at the temple you'd at least take a swing at me and then we'd apologize to each other, get drunk and have make up sex."  
  
"Aw sorry Buckles we can still rub bits together if that's what you want to do tonight yeah? It'll just be 'Ha ha sucks to those elfy elves' victory sex instead of 'Sorry I showed you noble shit and/or scary demon shits,' 'Sorry I tried to hit you in the face because of creepy demon shits yeah?' sex and then afterwards we can go point at Solas and laugh instead of eating cookies out on the roof."  
  
"Are you...gloating?"  
  
"I guess I am right? And why shouldn't I yeah? Those Danish elfy elves always act like they're so much better than me because they're all sad about the past all the time and I'm not. Well their past is all a bunch of lies and demon shit anyway so it's funny yeah? All the shit they are sad about never even really happened anyway right? I mean you can't have a The Maker and a bunch of shitty elfy elf gods...it doesn't make sense yeah. All lies and demon shit."  
  
"I guess there is a weird kind of logic to that..." Lydia said.  
  
"I knew you'd think so! Enough talk about stupid liar elfy elves yeah? I think you said something about wanting to explore my Temple of Mythral right?"  
  
"Sara! That's possible the lewdest thing you've ever said!"  
  
"That's part of my charm innit though?" Sara said with a laugh as she pulled Lydia on top of her on her futon.

* * *

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! THE FOLLOWING BOUT IS SET FOR ONE FALL WITH A ONE HOUR TIME LIMIT AND IS FOR THE HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE WOOOOOORLD!" Cullen bellowed. The crowd responded by roaring like a lion before he continued, "INTRODUCING FIRST THE CHALLENGER! REPRESENTING THE RED TEMPLARS AND HAILING FROM KIRKWALL...I GAVE YOU SAMSON!!"  
  
Lydia smirked to herself as Samson was dragged before her in chains and a chorus of boos rose from the assembled group of trial fans. This bout truly would go down in the annals of history as the trial of the age. Cullen continued bellowing, "AND NOW INTRODUCING THE REIGNING AND DEFENDING CHAMPION...HAILING FROM OSTWICK...LYDIA 'THE INQUISITOR' TREVELYN!"  
  
Cullen paused as another raucous cheer emanated from the assembled trial fans in the throne room. As the cheering died down he bellowed, "THE FOR THE THOUSANDS IN ATTENDANCE AND THE MILLIONS WHO WILL HEAR REPORTS OF THIS TRIAL FROM TOWN CRIERS IN TWO TO THREE DAYS TIME ALL ACROSS THEDAS....LET'S GET READY TO ADJUDICATE!"  
  
Samson glared at her from where he stood as the audience of trial fans roared with excitement. As the cheers died down Lydia said, "Cullen you can skip the list of crimes Samson is accused of since it's too damn long. Everyone already knows how huge a douchemonger this guy is. So Samson, you got anything to say for yourself?"  
  
"Coprophilia is still going to kick your asses in," Samson said, trying to sound like a badass, but it just came off as sad.  
  
"Doubtful. I want to ask you about Maddox. You took care of him until the end and in spite of everything he sacrificed himself for you. Why would he do that?"  
  
Samson scowled, "I don't want to talk about this."  
  
"It doesn't matter Samson. I think that it's because in spite of everything you somehow retained your humanity. You were a good man once and somewhere in your heart and mind that man still exists. So I'm giving you an opportunity. You have a lot of information that can help us and you are going to give it to us."  
  
"I'll never talk. The red lyrium will kill me soon enough," Samson retorted.  
  
"I'm sorry to hear that Samson. I wanted you to help us willing but it doesn't really matter. I'm confident that Cullen will find a way to get you to talk. That's your punishment by the way. You are released into the custody of Cullen for questioning."  
  
"WHAT?!" Cullen and Samson shouted in unison.  
  
"Aw look at that! You two are already talking like one another! It's adorable," Lydia said, "Okay there you go. Trial's over. Thanks for coming guys. I've got an elven temple to investigate this evening and a full day of battling Avaars ahead of me tomorrow so I'm outta here. Trial dismissed."  
  
Lydia headed from the throne room past clearly annoyed trial fans, "Man that was lame! How did this asshole get off easier than that stupid mayor from Crestwood?"  
  
Lydia just smiled. She'd swerved everyone. Unpredictability. It had served Sara and the Red Jennies well enough why couldn't it work for the Inquisition as well?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Director's Commentary: I thought it was lame that there didn't seem to be anyway to execute Samson. I think exile was probably the closest but I didn't really trust him to stay exiled so I gave him to Cullen. There will be a brief break from the main plot while I do some DLC so that's what's coming up.


	2. Dragon Age - S07E02 - Enter The Frostfang Basin

"This place is kind of poorly named," Lydia said to no one in particular as she wiped the sweat from her brow. She had traveled far to the south to the Frostfang Basin only to find instead of ice and snow and yetis and penguins the Basin was a sweltering tropical jungle with humidity, mosquitoes, and disgusting lizard monsters. She supposed it wasn't any different from Feldspar almost completely lacking the mineral from which it took its name or the Free Marches being home to some of the highest parade and marching taxes in all of Thedas.

She made her way across the Inquisition base camp until she found Scout Harding. The young dwarf seemed to be weathering the unbearable heat and humidity better than most. Lydia wondered whether or not dwarves could actually sweat.  Scout Harding smiled at her and greeted her with, "Inquisitor! Welcome to Frostfang Basin! As I'm sure you heard this is probably the final resting place of the last inquisitor, some dude or dudine who died like 800 years ago. Anyway the Professor over there can tell you more about that stuff. You'll be going out into some of the most dangerous, disgusting terrain we've encountered yet. There are countless wild beasts, acid spiders, and hella Avaar. Some of the Avaar have been pretty friendly to us. They have a hold out in the east and call themselves the Stonebear Clan, but the other Avaar...the Jaws of Harkon...those ones are another matter all together. They have attacked us pretty much from the start. The have camps along the river and pretty much attack every one of our supply barges. It's kind of a pain in the ass."

"I would imagine so," Lydia said, "I'll look into stopping them after I talk to the Professor. Anything else Scout Harding?"

"The Avaar are tall...like so tall. I think if we could get some of them to join the Inquisition we could use them. A dwarven archer could ride on their shoulders...like Master Blaster from Beyond Thunderdome.  Man imagine the mayhem they could cause...MAYHEM!!!!"

_Mayhem!_

"MAYHEM!!!" Bull shouted from behind her.

Scout Harding looked around nervously and Lydia sighed, "Get it out of your system..."

"MAYHEM!!!!" the dwarven scout bellowed.  Several Inquisition soldiers turned to look at her and her face reddened.

"I can talk to Cullen about your plan if you want," Lydia offered, "Sometimes we need to cause mayhem after all."

"You would do that for me?" Scout Harding asked in shock.

"Sure.  You're a good friend Scout," Lydia replied, "Anyway I should talk to that professor guy and see what the deal is with this guy who had my job before I did.  Smell ya later."

"You know my name's not actually Scout right?  That's just my job," Scout Harding said as Lydia walked off toward the Professor's archaeology hut.

Lydia turned and replied, "Oh snap!  For reals?  I thought it was like that girl in To Kill a Mockingbird.  Sorry.  I guess I don't actually know your first name."

"It's Lace."

"WHAT?!  FOR REAL?!" Lydia exclaimed, "Can I call you Scout instead?  It's pretty much a better name than Lace."

"Uhhh...okay...I guess."

"Alright.  Smell ya later Scout!" Lydia said with a wave and then tromped over to the archaeology shack.

A smarmy French professor stood inside looking at a tray of old school belt buckles.  He did not appear to have a whip or a really cool hat.  "Ah Inquizitor!  I have been waiting.  I have been studying the previous Inquizitor and it zeems 'is last days where fighting a battle on an island near 'ere, but with ze Avaar it is far too dangerous for me to venture forth and investigate non?  Perhaps you could look into it.  Perhaps ze Stonebear Avaar will know of some way onto ze island."

"Let's hope so dude because I really need some kind of magical sword or something so I can kill a horacrux dragon," Lydia said.

**Commercial Break**

Lydia was up to her shins in jungle gunk, her heart pounding in her chest.  Why did it have to be spiders?  The river was teeming with them.  Spiders the size of house cats that barfed poison all over the place.

"Buckles, you doing alright yeah?" Sara asked, "You look like you might sick up all over yeah...oh!  Oh, it's cuz the spiders right?  Yeah don't worry about that, I promise I'll protect you Love."

Lydia smiled meekly and muttered a word of thanks, but before anyone had the chance to make some snide remark about how the "Herald of Andraste," a woman who had walked in the Fade in the flesh and battled dragons was deathly afraid of spiders, the sound of steel on steel and guys yelling, "I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU MOTHERFUCKER!" filled the air.  There was a battle brewing nearby.

"Look, those are some of ours...and those too talls must be the Avaars that Scout told us about!" Lydia shouted, "To arms!"

She whipped out her replica elven Chopper Deluxe and hauled ass to the Inquisition camp that was under attack.  The Avaar were tall as fuck and pretty much roughnecks.  They had weird snow camouflage ponchos of white, grey and blue on seemingly oblivious to  fact that they were in the middle of a lush verdant jungle and they wielded huge glowing World of Warcraft hammers.  Lydia charge forward but one of the two talls caught her in the gut with a hammer blow that sent her flying through the air into the river.

"Fuck..." she muttered and turned to spit a mouthful of blood into the river.  Lydia stood slowly, her ribs ached.  There were probably broken bones that would require the chugging of a potion, but before she could pound a potion she saw another hammer brother moving towards Sara.  

"Sara look out those hammer dudes are strong as fuck!" Lydia shouted. 

The elf did a back flip, releasing an arrow as she moved out of harms way that caught the hammer brother in the eye.  The Avaar sledgehammer asshole howled in agony and Lydia sprinted forward, oblivious to the throbbing pain in her ribs, and with a mighty leap, brought her replica elven Chopper Deluxe down into the jerkoff Avaar's skull.  The dude's dome totally exploded.  Skull chunks and brain splatter burst and bloomed from the wound Chopper Deluxe had inflicted.  The Avaar hammer jackass collapsed in a heap of being dead and one of the Inquisition officers stepped forward.

"Lady Inquisitor, you got here just in time.  I'm not certain we could have held them off much longer," the officer said.

Lydia finished chugging a potion and asked, "What's the situation here Captain?"

"Well, we're having a heckuva time getting supplies in.  This place is a goddamn jungle after all.  Theoretically we could send barges of supplies down the river, but the Avaar are wrecking house on all the boats," the Captain said, "If you could clear those damnable Avaar off the shores we'd be able to get supplies and be in much better shape."

"Sounds like a plan dude," Lydia said, "We'll take care of those chumpasses for you posthaste!"

The Captain said some words of thanks and Lydia and her posse set off to take care of Avaar Harkons.  Nearly every step of the way they were waylaid by goddamn spiders and Lydia found herself wishing she was taking sledgehammer blows to the gut rather than fighting skittering spiders that barfed green acid poison all over the place.  At least a giant Avaar with a hammer wasn't going to somehow lay eggs in her ear unbeknownst to her.  The same could not be said for a disgusting spider.

It was slow, arduous going, but eventually Lydia and her posse found the first of the Avaar camps.  They fought it out with the Harkon assholes there within at considerable cost, but ultimately emerged triumphant.  Several more camps were raided in a similar fashion.  With the last of the hammer dudes a mangled pile of ruined bones and mangled flesh on the ground before her, Lydia slumped.  She was a bloody mess, but the same was true of Sara and Dorian as well (Bull had seemingly emerged from the battles completely unscathed).

She handed Dorian and Sara the last two potions of healing and watched them chug of them freely, their bones setting and their wounds evaporating like the morning dew under a summer sun.  She wiped away the blood from her nose with the back of her hand and said, "Alright let's get back to the Captain and tell him the river should be safe for barges now."

She tried to smile, but her jaw ached.  That was probably broken too.  She hoped that she and her friends would be able to make it back to camp without getting attacked for she was not certain she would be able to withstand any sort of combat, should she and her crew get ambushed by hammer dudes.

The Maker was with her that day, for Lydia and her friends were able to travel back to camp unmolested.  She informed the Captain of their victory and then promptly collapsed.  When she awoke, she found herself on a cot in a tent.  Sara was seated on a small stool at the side of the cot.  Lydia smiled and said, "Hello Sara."  Lydia touched her jaw gingerly and found it no longer hurt.  He ribs, too, felt as if they had healed and the bruises on her knuckles had vanished as well.

"Don't do that again yeah?  You're supposed to be the strong one yeah?" Sara said, "I mean at least Bull was there to carry you, because if it was just me and Dorian, I don't think we would have been able to get you back here."

"And where is here exactly?  Weren't we right outside a tent in that forward camp?" Lydia asked.

"Didn't you listen to plot yeah?" Sara asked in an exasperated voice, "They had no supplies because of those Harkon arseholes we had just killed.  Supplies don't travel hundreds of leagues in a couple seconds...not even with magic shite.  So we carried you back to the base camp.  Well, Bull carried you.  Dorian and I just shot shitty spiders that tried to sick up all over Bull...and maybe I cried."

Lydia sat up and smiled, "I'm sorry I scared you Sara.  I'll be more careful the next time we fight assholes with hammers."

"It's alright Buckles," Sara replied, "Are your ribs okay now because I'm going to hug you now regardless, but will feel like a dick if they still hurt."

**Commercial Break**

"So Scout what's the word on the street?" Lydia asked Scout Harding the next morning.

"Well one of our scouts, a guy named Gabe, hasn't reported back yet.  We were supposed to hear from him last night but there hasn't been a peep," Scout said, "Normally I wouldn't worry.  Gabe's a good scout...really knows his stuff, but a couple days ago one of his friends, an archaeologist named Indiana, was killed by the Harkons.  I'm afraid Gabe might have done something rash, and while he's a good scout, he's not really a fighter, so..."

"We can go look for him if you'd like," Lydia offered.

"That would be great," Scout Harding said and handed Lydia a paper, "The area he was supposed to be scouting is marked on this map, you might want to check there first."

"Sounds good Scout," Lydia replied, "Well, I guess that means smell ya later."

"Smell ya later Inquisitor."

Lydia and her friends set off in search of Gabe the Scout.  It wasn't long before they found his patrol route and made a gruesome discovery: a Harkon warlord that had been totally swordfucked to death.  The warlord's limbs were totally missing and on the torso, was carved, "Gabe was here," in a rather elegant script.  A massive sledgehammer lay nearby, it's haft snapped clean in two.  Clearly they were on the right path, but something seemed amiss.  Lydia's posse had been knocked the fuck out by Harkon hammer dudes.  How could one single scout have survived such a house wrecking onslaught?

"Maybe we can follow some of this blood," Bull suggested, "One scout against a Harkon hammer dude...I don't like his chances of surviving, even if he did fuck that one dude up pretty badly."

"We'll follow the blood, but let's try to keep a good thought.  Maybe Gabe got lucky," Lydia said.

The followed the trail until they came to a Harkon camp, entirely burninated.  Bodies of Harkons were strewn about, chopped to bits in a similar fashion to the hammer dude they had encountered earlier.  Another "Gabe was here," message was found, this time scrawled in blood upon the side of a canvas Harkon tent.

"I don't get it right?" Sara said, "I get knocked out by one of those hammer guys in a single blow, but somehow this Gabe guy can waltz into one of these camps, all like, 'Hullo whut's this?  Oh you're dead!' and paint creepy blood messages all over the place.  Doesn't make sense yeah?"

Sara was right.  It was becoming more and more obvious that something was terribly wrong.  Following bloody footprints lead to several more camps, all similarly burninated and desecrated until they finally came to a heap of Harkon warlords all chopped into neat cubes outside the mouth of a cave.  Lydia looked to Sara, Dorian and Bull and said, "Be ready.  I don't know what we're going to find in that cave."

Sara nocked an arrow and Bull eased his axe out of his axe holster as they entered the cave.  Inside the saw a young elven man, dressed in the uniform of an Inquisition scout caked with drying blood.  "Are you Gabe?" Lydia asked.

"Yes, I am Gabe," the man said and then upon realizing who stood before him, added, "Oh Lady Inquisitor I didn't realize it was you!  I'm sorry for deserting my post.  That's why you're here isn't it?  I had reason...they just killed my boyfriend.  He wasn't even armed.  He was an archaeologist, not a soldier."

"About that trail of carnage out there," Lydia began, dreading the answer that would come, "We went up against Harkons too and pretty much got our shit ruined.  How did you manage?"

Gabe said, "Well, I wasn't always a soldier.  Before the rebellion I was living in the Tower of Wizard Shit here in Feldspar, but after the rebellion the Circle was gone so I joined up with the Inquisition when you conscripted us all.  I'd never really been any good with combat spells, so once I joined the Inquisition I learned how to use a sword.  I guess your arms masters are really good teachers..."

"Oh man...you're a mage?" Lydia moaned.  Why hadn't she even considered it?

"Yes, like I said I was a mage in the tower before the rebellion...never really had any aptitude for it," Gabe replied, "I could barely light a candle."

"And now you're somehow able to cast crazy inferno spells and are pretty much a one man wrecking crew on Avaars?" Lydia sighed.

Behind her she heard Sara gasp, "Oi!  It's demon shit isn't it yeah?  That's how he could wreck house all the way here when even you got knocked the fuck out by those hammer guys right?"

"What?  No...there's no demon..." Gabe began, but his voice soon was hit with Turbo Bass and he shouted, "SHUT UP BOY!  I AM HERE TO HELP YOU!  THESE FOOLS KNOW NOTHING OF TRUE STRENGTH!"

"Demon be gone!" Lydia shouted, momentarily wondering if Solas would have been of any help in this situation.

The demon suddenly overtook Gabe's body, turning into a giant blob of burnination.  Lydia sighed and shot some Templar shit at the demon giving her a moment to draw her replica elven Chopper Deluxe and rush all up on the demon.  Fires raged all about as the party fought it out with the demon.  Poor Dorian was reduced to pretty much just hand to hand combat, since his inferno spells had little to no effect on the demon that was shaped like fire.  Fortunately, however, Lydia was able to pick up some of the slack due to her prowess at wrecking house on demons, and soon the demon of fire was gone, leaving behind the ruined body of Gabe.

"Bah!  Fuckin' demons right?  Always ruining everything yeah?" Sara shouted and spat in an exaggerated fashion.

Sara was right, it was always demons...every time.  Fucking demons indeed.

 

 


	3. Dragon Age - S07E03 - Clan of the Cave Bear

"Looking good Boss," Bull said with a smirk, "I knew that hanging around with me would turn you to the Qun sooner or later. Kinda wish it'd been sooner...partly because maybe I wouldn't be Tal Vasoth now, but mostly because you've got nice tits.  It's really a shame you've been hiding them all this time."   
  
"Yeah she does right!" Sara exclaimed.  
  
Lydia scowled at Sara and found herself wishing she had a suit of platemail on instead of the ludicrously skimpy Qunari garb she'd taken to wearing. Perhaps if the Frostfang Basin hadn't been so unbearable hot and humid she would have put the heavy steel armor back on.  
  
"If we're done discussing my breasts we've got work to do," Lydia said, "We've got to head to Stonebear Hold and see if the Avaar who live there will help us wreck house on those Harkon assholes and it's a long hike."  
  
"As long as you're leading Boss. I never really noticed how nice your ass was before when it was covered with a chainmail skirt," Bull said smiling lewdly.  
  
"Bull, you never noticed it back at Skyhold? Were you blind the entire time I knew you?" Sara asked with a mischievous smirk, "I mean she's always walking around in yoga pants yeah?"  
  
Bull shrugged and said, "I'm a Qunari. I guess Qunari garb still catches my eye better than your human clothes. I mean, yeah I knew she had a nice ass from day one, but put here in a pair of Qunari MC Hammer pants and it's just like, 'Jesus Gotdamn!'"  
  
Sara nodded, "That makes sense. Like I've seen her naked loads of times but when she wears that silk tit thing..."  
  
"You're thinking about it now aren't you?" Bull asked.  
  
Sara nodded and a smile crept across her face and Lydia sighed, "Come on. We've got a long way to go yet," and started walking.  
  
"If it makes you feel any better I've never once thought about your backside or your breasts," Dorian said as they set off for Stonebear Keep.  
  
"Thanks Dorian. I knew there was a reason why I kept you around...besides the mustache of course," Lydia said sarcastically.  
  
"Of course. My mustache and the fact that I don't leer at your body parts like a wolf eyeing an injured halla...those are the only reasons why you're glad to have me in the Inquisition."  
  
"Yeah pretty much."   
  
"Good to know."  
  
 **Commercial Break  
**  
  
Stonebear Keep was a collection of rough wooden buildings and caves built into the side of a cliff in the easternmost reaches of the Frostfang Basin. The Avaar who called the Keep home, had thus far, proven themselves far more hospitable than the Harkon assholes who assailed Lydia and her friends at every opportunity, welcoming Lydia and her friends into their keep quite readily. That being said, they too, in spite the heat and humidity that came with living in a jungle, clad themselves in a variety of hides and furry shoulders that put even Cullen's furry shoulders to shame. Lydia wondered where they even found the hides necessary to craft such garments. The only wildlife Lydia had encountered in the basin were decidedly non-furry gross lizard things and spiders, who were more hairy than furry.  
  
Lydia decided that she should find whoever was in charge and speak to them and said to her companions, "Okay guys, I'm going to go find the chieftain or grand poobah or whoever is in charge here. You dudes can look around here...just don't get into any trouble."   
  
She then turned and walked off towards the largest building in the hold. If the Avaar were anything like the nobles of Ostwick or Feldspar or Orleans the largest building was undoubtedly where the boss of the town lived. As she walked away, Bull whistled appreciatively. Without turning, she raised her arm and stuck up her middle finger. This caused both Bull and Sara to laugh hysterically rather than have its desired effect. Lydia sighed and continued up the path towards the largest building in the keep. As she drew closer she head the sounds of vigorous athletic competition. As she entered the town commons she saw that two stalwart Avaar gentleman were scaling a rock wall as an assembled crowd below yelled uncouth oaths and words of encouragement at the climbers. The climbers climbed and the audience screamed insults at them until finally one of the two Avaars reached the top of the cliff where he grabbed his crotch and yelled, "Suck it!" at his opponent.   
  
The crowd below roared in approval and Lydia turned to head towards the giant wood house on the other end of the town commons, but before she'd taken two steps a voice called out to her, "Hail lowlander, I have heard that the Lady Inquisitor has traveled to visit us in Stonebear Keep. Are you perhaps her?"  
  
Lydia turned to see a stunningly beautiful woman clad in assorted pelts and furry shoulders standing before her. "I am. And...who might you be?" Lydia stammered to the beautiful barbarian.  
  
"My name is Svetlana Fire-Hair, and I am the Barbaroness of Stonebear Keep. Come, we have much to discuss," the woman in pelts said and lead Lydia back to her house.  
  
"Sit please," Svetlana said, "let us break bread together."  
  
Lydia sat near the fire as Svetlana ripped a chunk of bread in two and sat down in a pretty awesome throne. "Already tales of your heroics have reached us here in Stonebear Keep. Here you are know to our skalds as the woman who heals the sky and lays with elves. The songs and stories they sing are quite numerous and varied. Did you truly shave a rude slogan into your secret hair to trick an elven princess into bedding you?"  
  
Lydia nearly choked on her bread, "Uh...more or less."  
  
"Clearly, though that is not what has brought you here to Stonebear Keep," Svetlana Fire-Hair said.  
  
"Well, my companions and I are investigating the last Inquisitor. One of our staff seems to think the dude's body is out on some island, but the Harkons are giving us an entire heap of shit," Lydia said, "You don't think you could help us with them do you?"  
  
Svetlana shook her head, "Though the Harkons are violent fools and I am quite afraid that the Harkons and the Clan of the Stonebear have sworn an oath of non-aggression with one another. I cannot very easily break an oath, but perhaps if you could help me with something I would consider aiding you against the Harkons."  
  
"Helping people complete random tasks is kind of my bread and butter at this point. What do you need?"  
  
"Our Holdbeast, Stuttgart, has gone missing, but should we go out and look for her ourselves the Harkons will give us shit about 'Being pussies.' I mean I don't really care what they call us, but some of the other people in the Keep worry about that kind of shit still," Svetlana said, "Maybe you could go out an look for her for us."  
  
"Yeah I guess we can do that. What's a holdbeast?"  
  
"It's pretty much a mascot. Stuttgart is a bear. They pretty much represent our crew and if anything should happen to her it will be an ill omen. So we really need to find her. Do this and the Stonebears will have your back."  
  
Lydia nodded like a boss.  "Alright...I'll save your bear."  
  
 **Commercial Break  
**  
  
"I'm looking pretty fetch now aren't I yeah?" Sara said, twirling with a flourish in a pelt garment she had purchased in Stonebear Keep.  
  
"You look hot," Lydia said.  
  
"Thanks, I knew you'd like it," Sara replied, putting her hands on her hips in a saucy fashion.  
  
"No, I meant you look like you're boiling," Lydia replied, "We're in a goddamn jungle swamp right now. I don't know how you're not even sweating..."  
  
"Elves don't sweat."  
  
Lydia grumbled under her breath and wiped the sweat from her own brow and then said, "Well, just keep your eyes open for signs of a 'Holdbeast.'"  
  
"What, like that giant cage wagon over there with bear shit in it?" Bull asked pointing to a giant cage wagon with bear shit in it, stuck in the swamp gunk a few feet in front of them.  
  
Near the cage they found footprints of both a bear and people leading away from the wagon to an crumbling ruin of a building. From inside the building came voices speaking with Avaar accents. Lydia pointed towards the building and mouthed the words, "In here," before she and her crew crept into the building. It soon became quite obvious that the building was an abandoned jail. A thoroughly annoyed roar echoed through the halls.  
  
"That must be Stuttgart," Lydia whispered.  
  
"Who?" asked Dorian.  
  
"The Holdbeast."  
  
Dorian shrugged.  
  
Lydia sighed, "The bear we're looking for. Come on. We probably have some Harkon assholes to chop up."  
  
At the end of the hall they saw Harkon assholes just waiting to be chopped up. She charged forward swinging her replica elven Chopper Deluxe about like a maniac. Harkon assholes screamed in pain as chunks of their body were chopped off by the mighty sword of Lydia Trevelyn, but then a hammer brother smashed her in the head. Lydia was knocked across the room. She stood slowly. It was clear to her that her jaw was once again broken. She sighed, and chugged a potion before charging back into the fray. Dorian, Sara, and the Iron Bull had done a pretty good job with a lot of the yard trash, but the hammer brother was still running roughshod, smacking her friends in the face with a hammer.  
  
Lydia gritted her teeth and threw her chain hook at the hammer brother. "C'mere! Get over here!" she shouted and then leaped up and chopped the shit out of the dude's dome. He collapsed in a pile of dead body. Nearby, in a cage lay a tiny bear. It was undoubtedly Stuttgart.  
  
  
 _"Get over here!!!"_  
  
"Good job dudes," Lydia said, "Sara, do you want to open that cage? I mean you're pretty good with locks, plus you're dressed like a Stonebear Keep denizen, so maybe the familiar will keep the bear calm."  
  
"What?!" Sara exclaimed, "You want me to open a cage containing a possibly dangerous bear, while wearing an outfit that, fetch as it makes me look, is probably crafted out of this bear's relatives. Are you daft?"  
  
"Sara...please."  
  
"Okay fine, but only if you wear that tit thing tonight!" Sara said and then walked over to the lever that clearly controlled the cage door and pulled it down. Slowly the door to the cage creaked open and the bear sniffed the air.  
  
Everyone held their breaths a moment, but the bear proved to be rather docile. Breathing a sigh of relief, Lydia said, "Alright guys, let's get back to the Keep and tell that Svetlana lady we found her bear!"  
  
The party headed out and were instantly attacked by more Harkon suckbags, but this time Lydia had a goddamn bear on her side. The bear tore the asshole hammer brothers apart as Lydia and her crew wrecked all the house on the stupid archers and mages who had accompanied the hammer brothers. Stuttgart proved to be a one bear wrecking crew and Lydia found herself wishing she had a bear ally all the time. Soon the Harkon dickbags were all totally dead, ripped apart by bears and burninated by Dorian fires, and punctured by arrows and chopped up by axes. The swamp was a goddamn mess.  
  
"Come on guys, let's get back to the Keep."  
  
\---  
  
Lydia and her posse found themselves in Svetlana's manor back in Stonebear Keep. The Barbaroness looked concerned. "I have heard of your success in freeing Stuttgart from the Harkons, and even had I not promised to break my oath, I would join you in your fight against the Harkon. To steal another keep's Holdbeast is tantamount to a declaration of war, more over my scouts scouted that jail and found evidence of what the Harkons planned to do with poor Stuttgart."  
  
"What was that?" Lydia asked.  
  
"It is too unspeakable, but suffice it to say they sought to bring their god, Harkon, to life in the flesh and march on the lowlands," Svetlana said, "They must be stopped. They have a fortress in the basin, but it is a lowlander fortress with lowlander magics upon it that have erected a wall of impenetrable ice. Perhaps your people will be able to find a way in as our own augurs cannot."  
  
Lydia nodded, "Alright Svetlana, I'll go look into this, because I really need to get on that island to get a magical sword or something so I can kill a horacrux dragon..."

Lydia nodded, "Alright Svetlana, I'll go look into this, because I really need to get on that island to get a magical sword or something so I can kill a horacrux dragon..."


	4. Dragon Age – S07E04 – Descent Part I

It was good to be back at Skyhold, out of the spider infested sweatbox that was the Frostfang Basin, if only just for a couple days. She’d be glad to take a hot bath and sleep in a real bed, both of which she intended to do with Sara, but before she could do either of those things she need to find a way to magic the shit out of an ice wall somewhere in the jungles of Frostfang Basin. Her war room seemed like the best place to start. Clearly one of her advisors would have some idea about how to render an ice wall useless. Lydia threw open the doors to the war room and strode in like a boss only to find Josephine and Blackwall groping each other. Lydia cleared her throat and the Antivan nerd and the fake Grey Warden quickly stopped making out and turned to look at her.  
  
“Uh…I thought you were in the Frostfang Basin,” Josephine said sheepishly, “I had no idea you’d returned.”  
  
“Just briefly. I need some wizards to deal with an ice wall,” Lydia replied, “So if you and the others have any suggestions, I’m all ears.”  
  
“Well off the top of my head…umm….uhh…I’ve got nothing,” Josephine replied as she attempted to discreetly button her blouse, “Perhaps Leliana might have some ideas.”  
  
“Alright Josephine, I’ll leave you to it then…” she turned and headed out of the war room and closed the door. Behind her she heard Josephine giggle coquettishly.  
  
Lydia made her way through the halls of the Skyhold Dream Castle, past trial fans who were still talking about how lame it was that Samson didn’t even get decapitated, let alone suffer some funny ironic punishment. She sighed as she made her way up the stairs to Leliana’s attic lair. Why couldn’t the trial fans be patient and wait for the payoff that would come. Yeah she could have totally cut that dude’s head off right there in the throne room, but that would be it...no chance for a redemption storyline, or a noble sacrifice in the last battle. People were too impatient. Lydia climbed up the final staircase into the attic. There she found Leliana seated at her desk reading a letter, a sappy grin upon her face.  
  
Leliana looked up and put the letter away. “Ah you’ve returned. We weren’t expect you for several days still.”  
  
“I can come back later if this is a bad time,” Lydia said.  
  
“No no, I was just reading a letter from my beloved Odette. Whenever I feel lonely I read her letters and know that she is out there somewhere thinking of me…hopefully it won’t be much longer until I can see her again.”  
  
“Yeah I it shouldn’t be too much longer before we crush Coprophilia and put this entire thing behind us,” Lydia said.  
  
“But even after Coprophilia is dead, there will still be work to be done…wrongs to right…downtrodden to lift up.”  
  
Lydia smiled, “I know, but you should be able to leave Skyhold and be with your girlfriend once Coprophilia’s bested. You’ve set up a pretty decent spy network already, plus Sara has the Red Jennies. I think the Inquisition will be able carry on with the snooping even if you are out west with Odette.”  
  
“Perhaps you are right, but there is also the matter of Conclave of the Divine,” Leliana said, “As you have undoubtedly heard, there are whispers that I am being considered for the position of Divine.”  
  
“I think you’d be good at it…but what about Odette? Can the Divine have a girlfriend? Could you get married?” Lydia asked, “Would you be happy as Divine?”  
  
“If I were Divine, I’d change everything! I would get rid of the circles and allow all into the chantry…elves, dwarves…even Qunari, because why not? And I would let chantry sisters and mothers marry if they so desire, because is that not what the Chant of Light is all about anyway? Love? Love is the most important thing in the entire world and for some reason the Chantry has forgotten that. I would make it my duty to remind us all of that fact.”  
  
“I suddenly feel guilty about thinking Cassandra would be a better option as Divine than you,” Lydia said sheepishly.  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“It’s not like I thought you’d be bad or anything it’s just…well, she’s so doesn’t seem to have any connections to the outside world. Does she have friends outside the Inquisition? Family? Lovers? You are for better or worse attached to the secular world. At first, I thought that maybe that would be a problem, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s a good thing that you have friends and lovers and know people in tiny towns in Feldspar and big cities in Orleans…” Lydia said, “Sorry, I’m rambling aren’t I?”  
  
“No, it’s quite alright,” Leliana said with a smile.  
  
“Anyway whatever you want to do when this is all over, I’ll support you Leliana,” Lydia said, “There’s actually a reason I’m here. Out in the Frostfang Basin there’s a group of asshole Avaars called the Jaws of Harkon. They’re hiding out in some fort built by Feldsparians and there’s some magic on it in the form of a giant ice wall. I teamed up with some other Avaar, but they can’t figure out the quote unquote ‘lowlander magic.’ You’re generally pretty good at figuring this stuff out, so what have you got?”  
  
“That’s a tough one…my scouts could…no, that wouldn’t work. I could dispatch…no he’s already working on something else right now. Did you ask Josie?”  
  
“Yeah, but she wasn’t much help. Did you know she and Blackwall are hooking up by the way?”  
  
“Yes, unfortunately. Josie sometimes makes rather poor relationship choices. It’s a shame that you and she never dated. I think you two would have been quite well suited for each other and a quite adorable couple.”  
  
Lydia sighed, “There was a time when I would have considered it, but that ship has sailed. Sara and I are quite happy together.”  
  
“Yes, I can see that you two are indeed happy together. I am sorry if I gave offense, and more sorry that I was unable to come up with a solution to your ice wall problem. Perhaps Cullen has some idea, undoubtedly one that involves marching and/or fighting it out.”  
  
Some minutes later Lydia found herself in Cullen’s office. His desk still wobbled, a result of the prank she had Sara played upon him all those months ago, as he wrote atop it. Cullen put down his pen and scratched his chin in thought. “Well, I have no idea how to bring down a magical construct of that size. We are going to need time to come up with a solution. You may want to look into this while you wait,” and handed Lydia a note.  
  
“What’s this?” Lydia asked, not wanting to be assed to read a note.  
  
“Turns out there have been some redankulous earthquakes down in the Deep Roads and now there are darkspawn running roughshod all over the place. The dwarves of Orzimmar have requested your assistance in getting to the bottom of it.”  
  
“Dammit Cullen, I’m an Inquisitor not a seismologist,” Lydia said, “Don’t the dwarves have some Legion of the Dead to take care of the darkspawn anyway?”  
  
“I guess those guys can’t get there. Anyway, you might want to check it out since the mines in that region are the source of like 90% of our lyrium, and without it the Templars we have here in Skyhold will be little use, and speaking a little more personally, getting off lyrium cold turkey is not something I’d wish upon my worst enemy.”  
  
 **Commercial Break  
  
**  
The lift before them looked rickety as fuck, but Scout Harding assured them it was pretty well constructed. Lydia and her crew had hauled ass to the Deep Road entrance near the Storm Coast and now stood face to face with the adorable Inquisition scout. “We got some dwarves to build it so it should hold together alright…just stay away from the edge since it shakes a little bit and those dwarves didn’t think to put any sort of railing on the lift,” she said, “and it’s a hella long way down. Anyway your contact is down there…all the way from Orzimmar….la de fuckin’ da!”  
  
“Don’t like Orzimmar eh?” Lydia asked.  
  
“More like they don’t like me,” Scout Harding said, “Anyway fuck ‘em….and good luck down there Inquisitor.”  
  
Lydia swallowed hard and climbed onto the rickety lift with Iron Bull, Dorian and Sara. She gave Scout a thumbs up and Scout Harding had some workers throw a lever. There was a grinding of gears as slowly the lift began its descent into the Deep Roads. Sara spat, “Fucking shitty darkspawn shite…can’t believe you talked me into coming down here yeah?”  
  
“It’s because you love her isn’t it?” Bull asked mockingly.  
  
“Yeah of course it is right? Why else would I come down into the ground where all these wrong things live if I didn’t love her yeah?” Sara answered, “Wait a second, Dorian, what are you wearing yeah? What happened to your wizard dress?”  
  
Lydia looked at Dorian carefully for the first time since they set off from camp that morning. His mustache was remarkably well groomed and highly defined, and instead of his usual wizrobes, Dorian was clad in a ridiculous garment of Qunari make that showed off his rockhard abs and chiseled pecs.  
  
Bull started laughing hysterically, “HA HA HA! A davint dressed in sarabas garb! Oh man, this is too much! HA HA HA! Wait a second...are you wearing that because I kept looking at Boss’ ass when she was wearing Qunari clothes?”  
  
Dorian cast his eyes down and said, “I don’t know…maybe I am.”  
  
“Aw you didn’t have to do that. I check out your ass even in that wizard dress,” Bull said, “C’mere and gimme a hug.” Dorian moved toward the Qunari warrior causing the lift to shift violently.   
  
“JESUS DUDE! DON’T DO THAT NOW!” Lydia shouted, “I really don’t feel like falling a million and three feet to my death.”  
  
“Sorry,” Dorian muttered as the lift slowly continued to descend down into the bowels of the earth.  
  
Several minutes later the lift finally came to a stop at the bottom of the pit leading into the Deep Roads. The lift had apparently deposited them in a morgue since several feet from where they disembarked was a row of bodies covered with dropcloths. A lone lady dwarf clad in heavy dwarven plate armor stood in the shadows reading names off a clipboard. “So many dead,” the lady dwarf said and then looking up from her clipboard and noticing Lydia and her crew greeted them, “Ah you must be the Inquisition. Thank you for coming. My name is Shaper Vorta. The earthquakes that opened up that surface rift also opened up some barriers we erected to keep the darkspawn out. The darkspawn have been pouring in like woah so we need your help to stop them.”  
  
“Are you hiding in the shadows?” Lydia asked.  
  
“If you quote unquote sky touches me I risk losing my caste and becoming casteless…” the lady dwarf said.  
  
“I guess that’s a pretty decent reason to lurk in the shadows,” Lydia admitted, “Anyway, why ask the Inquisition for help? I thought you dwarves of Orzimmar had a roughneck Legion of the Dead who took care of this kind of shit all the time.”  
  
“We do, but these quakes came up very suddenly. It takes time to get messages to Orzimmar and time to get Legion of the Dead sent here, and it isn’t really like other Legion of the Dead soldiers are unoccupied. So we asked you since we are standing above the biggest lyrium mine in all of Feldspar, and the Inquisition is the number one consumer of lyrium in all of Thedas and probably wouldn’t want your supply suddenly cut off because of darkspawns creeping.”  
  
Lydia thought about the vial in her own satchel and nodded. “Okay,” she said, “We’ll help you out. Lead the way Vorta.”  
  
The dwarf suddenly lunged at Lydia, knocking her to the ground.  
  
 **Commercial Break  
**  
  
The lady dwarf atop Lydia was surprisingly heavy and equally apologetic. “Sorry. I probably should have yelled ‘Look out,’ or something huh?” Shaper Vorta, the lady dwarf, said as rolled off Lydia and stood.  
  
“It’s alright,” Lydia said as she, too, stood and dusted herself off, “Better to be tackled by a dwarf than crushed by a big ass rock.”  
  
A giant boulder now occupied the space where she and the lady dwarf had been standing but moments before. Lydia wondered how many of the dead dwarves covered with dropcloths had been rendered into a fine dwarf paste by that boulder. The earth trembled again sending more rubble tumbling free from the walls and ceiling of the Deep Roads.  
  
Vorta was like, “We should head back to the camp. This place isn’t safe anymore.”  
  
Lydia agreed and together with Shaper Vorta, she and her crew headed down a path toward the Legion of the Dead camp. A giant crevasse was to the left of the narrow path, its gapping maw leading deep into the earth. One wrong step and she would tumble a bajillion and four feet to her death. She held her breath as the earth once more trembled. The shaking soon passed and the party continued.  
  
“The camp is right over there,” Vorta said, but as the words issued forth from her wordhole, a huge hulking darkspawn busted through a wall and ran all up on them. “It’s an ogre!” Vorta shouted.  
  
Lydia drew her sweet replica elven Chopper Deluxe and charged forward, swinging her blade about like a woman possessed. The ogre grunted in a most vile manner and grabbed Sara in a chokehold. “PUT HER DOWN MOTHERFUCKER!” Lydia shouted and slammed the pommel of her sword into the back of the ogre’s head. The ogre dropped the elven lesbian archer and wheeled around to wreck house on whoever had just smacked it in the back of the dome, but Lydia was ready and swordchopped the living shit out of the ogre, causing it to collapse in a heap of being dead.  
  
“Thanks for wrecking house on that ogre. You pretty much saved my ass, but we should really pick up the pace, because if there’s an ogre out here that means that the camp is probably overrun with darkspawn,” Shaper Vorta said, “and I’m really not feeling that.”  
  
The lady dwarf was totally right, for as Lydia and her crew entered the “camp” they found a crew pack of dwarves setting up the bomb, as a stream of darkspawns poured out of a hole to wreck ass on the dwarves. An awesome looking dwarf with a Gorbachev head thing screamed, “WE GOTTA KILL THESE MOTHERFUCKING DARKSPAWNS AND PRIME THAT FUSE!”  
  
Sword drawn, Lydia rushed into the fray, chopping down hurlocks and gorlocks left and right. Served limbs of hundles and grundles soared through the air before her and her face was soon awash with blood. “Be careful with that blood Inquisitor, you can catch taint from that!” Vorta shouted as she shield slammed the crap out of some sort of darkspawn bowflexer near where Lydia battled.  
  
“Oi, these fuses yeah? I just light ‘em right?” Sara shouted, “And then we run yeah?”  
  
“Yes!” Gorbachev shouted in reply as he cut a hurlock in half vertically.  
  
“Yeah you might want to run then yeah, cuz I lit those things,” Sara shouted back.  
  
Everyone scrambled out of the chamber and crouched down behind a rock as the powder kegs exploded, sending an avalanche of rock and brick crashing down, covering the hole the darkspawns were creeping through in a heap of debris.  
  
Gorbachev stood and was like “Good job Inquisitor, you kill bugs good, man.”  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
“Anyway Inquisitor sealing off that one hole is just the start of our adventures. We still need to find the source of the earthquakes and put a stop to them,” Vorta said.  
  
“Umm…I think you misunderstand what an Inquisitor is. I’m not a goddess who can control natural phenomena. I’m just a lady with a big sword and a weird glowing thing stuck in my hand,” Lydia said.  
  
Sara cleared her through.  
  
Lydia sighed and added, “…and the best girlfriend in all of Thedas, who also happens to be the best archer in all of Thedas, so don’t get any crazy ideas alright?”  
  
Shaper Vorta’s voice got low, “I can hear the rocks singing and these earthquakes they have a rhythm to them…like someone driving down a suburban street in a supped up Civic at 3:00 am with a trunk full of amps blasting Mystikal’s ‘Shake Ya Ass.’ I think it’s titans.”  
  
Gorbachev sighed, “Again with the titans…”  
  
Vorta pouted, “It could be titans! No one has ever explored all the Deep Roads, and I have this one super old book that mentions titans once!”  
  
“That book could be like the Second Age’s version of Chariots of the Gods for all we know…or some book of fairytales,” Gorbachev replied, “But that being said, we still should go down into the Deep Roads and wreck house on some darkspawns while we got the Inquisitor and her peoples here. If that many darkspawn were coming up through that crack I’m willing to be there’s a nest not that far down.”  
  
Lydia nodded, “Alright guys I’ll help you explore the Deep Roads, killing any darkspawns we come across, and attempting to solve the mystery of why no one remembers the titans.”


	5. Dragon Age – S07E05 – Descent Part II

Down, down, down. Deeper into the very bowels of Thedas the ancient lift rumbled. Lydia had already readied her sword already, knowing that at the very least she would have to chop up a couple dozen hurlocks and trollocs and other creepy grosses. when the rumbling lift finally came to rest at the bottom of the shaft.  
  
“So how narrow are these tunnels?” Bull asked nervously, “Like, I’m a pretty big guy, are my horns going to get stuck on the walls or ceiling?”  
  
As the lift came to rest at that bottom of the lift shaft, Gorbachev smiled and said, “The dwarves of yore were pretty into bigass construction so you should be okay down there.”  
  
True to Gorbachev’s word, the tunnels of the Deep Roads were big as fuck and it quickly because obvious that Bull was like ninety-three gabillion times more likely to get his horns stuck on something in Skyhold than he was wandering around in the Deep Roads. The earth trembled somewhat as if on cue and Vorta was like, “Dudes we should head this way. There should be a lift into the lower levels down this way. If titans are roaming about, they are undoubtedly down in the lower levels.”  
  
Gorbachev scoffed, “Titans…yeah right. Anyway dudes, you see that crap over there? That not-orc droppings…day old at most from the look of it. That means they’ve been through this way, so be on your guard for not-orcs and not-goblins. They can catch you by surprise and then all it takes is one bite…”  
  
Suddenly, without warning, a heap of not-orcs jumped out of the shadows. Each wielded a wicked looking crude iron blade that they swung super aggressively, trying to chopfuck the shit out of Lydia and her crew. Lydia “The Inquisitor” Trevelyn wasn’t having it though and charged forward, swinging her own sword like a goddamn beast, cutting down not-orcs like a zamboni mowing a fresh heap of snow. Not-orc blood was flying all over the place, but Lydia was super careful not to get it into her eyes or mouth since Gorbachev had warned her that all it took was one drop to give her the blight. Soon the floor of the Deep Roads were awash with darkspawn blood and there were heaplettes of not-orc limbs strewn about. With the additional of double dwarves, her posse had transformed from a four person wrecking crew to a six person murder squad. It was fantastic.  
  
With the darkspawn threat neutralized the murder squad strolled forward, coming upon a weirdass door with crazyass gears all over it, but one gear appeared to be missing so the door wouldn’t open. Vorta was all like, “Man this door is a crazyass door. Let’s see if we can find a gear that will fit in here.”  
  
Several minutes later Lydia found a crazyass gear for the crazyass door in a heap of old school dwarven trash. Vorta was really impressed by the crazyass gear, “Woo! Look at that thing. I’ve never seen metal like that before. I hope we find some extra gears like this that I can study when this is all done with. Man, I can’t believe the Shaperate has no knowledge of this ore at all…it’s crazy how much shit we’ve forgotten.”  
  
Gorbachev huffed, “Vorta, you’re rambling…and there are hella darkspawn out here. We gotta keep moving because if those darkspawn catch our scent we’re goners, so let’s get a move on okay?”  
  
Shaper Vorta nodded and the murder squad returned to the crazyass door and installed the gear. “Here goes nothing,” Lydia said and pulled a lever. There was a clatter as the crazyass gears began to turn and a grinding as the crazyass door slowly creaked open. A crossbow bolt streaked by and from behind the door came the wild, feral howls of darkspawn.  
  
With her replica elven Chopper Deluxe drawn, Lydia rushed forward with reckless abandon, paying no heed to the bolts and arrows whizzed past her. She twirled and spun, Chopper Deluxe slicing through disgusting, unwashed darkspawn flesh as more arrows flew past her. Behind her she heard Sara let out a surprised shout as she took an arrow in the shoulder, “Ow! You stupid wrong thing! That’s my shoulder yeah? Those arrow shits hurt, but guess what? I’ve got a bunch of ‘em too right?”  
  
A volley of arrows streaked by in the opposite direction, causing the darkspawn bowflexers and axe battlers to drop to the stone floor of the passageway in a heap of no longer breathing. Their bodies, riddled with arrows, reminded Lydia of pincushions. She glanced back at Sara who grinned broadly and said, “That’s how you shoot someone with arrow shits you stupid dead wrong things!”  
  
“You kill bugs good man!” Gorbachev said to Sara, “You ever consider joining the Grey Wardens?”  
  
“What me? Are you havin’ a larf?” Sara said, “I don’t want anything to do with these stupid wrong things. The only reason I’m here now because of Buckles over there.”  
  
“Your name is Buckles?” Gorbachev said and chortled heartily.  
  
“It’s not her real name yeah?” Sara said, “It’s just one of those names that people who are rubbing their bits together have for each other right? Like I’m sure you’ve got one for Vortie over there yeah? Honeybum or Hot Lips or something.”  
  
Vorta’s face turned crimson, “Gorbachev and I are colleagues…friends at most! We don’t…rub our ‘bits’ together.”  
  
“What? Really? Do dwarves not have bits? I’ve never been with a dwarf before,” Sara said scratching her chin, "Cuz if you got bits it's kinda weird you too aren't rubbing 'em together yeah?  I mean it's pretty obvious you too fancy each other."  
  
“We have…’bits.’ It’s just Gorbachev and I are coworkers so even if one of us…or both of us…wanted to ‘rub our bits together’ as you put it, it would be improper,” Vorta replied.  
  
Sara made a rude noise with her tongue and said, “That’s stupid yeah? Buckles and I are coworkers…I guess she’s technically my boss…I think technically technically she’s my boss’ boss…but it doesn’t matter right? I fancy her. She fancies me. So we rub bits together and eat cookies and sloppy boss Vivian. Being coworkers or bosses or whatever shouldn’t matter because of love and shit. Right Buckles?”  
  
“Right Sara.”  
  
Bull was laughing, “Oh man, that was you two? Vivian was so mad about her hat! She came storming in and started yelling at me…thinking it must have been one of the Chargers…and that stench! What did you drop on her?”  
  
“Swamp funk,” Lydia replied matter-of-factly.  
  
“Remind me never to cross you, Boss.”  
  
“Bull we wouldn’t do that to you yeah?” Sara said, “You’re cool and don’t try to convince Buckles to stop rubbing bits together with me the way that bitch, Vivian did.”  
  
 **Commercial Break  
**  
  
The murder squad has pressed through the Deep Roads towards another lift that would take them even deeper into the Deep Roads and hopefully closer to the source of all the shaking and quaking. The going had not been easy. Darkspawn of all sort had assailed Lydia and her companions as they had trekked through the Deep Roads, collecting crazyass gears and opening crazyass doors, but they were apparently close to the lift they needed that would take them down into an ancient dwarven thang; Thang Hobart. They had entered a particularly large hall when Gorbachev motioned for everyone to stop.  
  
“Hold up,. Look over there,” Gorbachev said in a whisper as he pointed off into the distance, “That’s an ogre and if you can see past him…that’s the lift we need. We’re going to have to get past him to get to the lift.”  
  
Lydia readied her replica elven Chopper Deluxe and nodded. The others in the murder squad had readied their weapons as well. “Sara, perhaps you should do the honors,” Lydia said with a smile.  
  
“Fandabidozi!” Sara said. She dipped an arrow in a vial of poison, nocked it, and drew the bowstring back. “Eat it arsehole,” she said as she released the bowstring with a twang. The arrow flew across the hall, finding its mark and burying itself deep within the hide of the ogre. The ogre let out a howl of anger and beat its chest. “Shite…that usually works,” Sara said, “Bull, Buckles, Double Dwarves…please stop that arsehole before he chokes me out yeah? She did a flip backwards away from the ogre, shooting another arrow at it as it charged forward screaming incoherently.  
  
Lydia, Bull and the double dwarves charged forward, as per Lydia’s suggestion, ready to wreck house on a grand slammin’ darkspawn deluxe. Lydia was hella impressed by how much house Vorta and Gorbachev could wreck. It was just ogre bits flying all over the place in a mess of blood and guts. So much blood and guts, just all over everything. It wasn’t long before the ogre crashed to the ground. His shit was totally ruined. Chunks of his body were missing and a whole mess of blood was coming out of his wherever. Lydia and her crew did a victory dance, but the dwarves looked all melancholy and/or the infinite sadness.  
  
The double dwarves stood over a heap of dwarven corpses in the center of the hall. It was clear to even Lydia that they had caught the blight. Gorbachev growled in a rage, “Grrrr…we can’t even return them to the Stone. Sodding sodden darkspawns! CAN’T EVEN RETURN THEM TO THE STONE!!!”  
  
“Gorbachev, we can purify them with fire…it’s the best we can do for them,” Vorta said, “I’m sorry.”  
  
“Yeah I’m sorry for your loss double dwarves,” Lydia said, “Take however much time you need, then we’ll go wreck house on more darkspawn…bloodlust revenge style.”  
  
The double dwarves thanked Lydia for her patience and then burned up some bodies and said some crap in dwarfese. With the ad hoc funeral finished, it was then time to go down into a old school dwarf thang. The murder squad boarded the lift and hit the lever. There was a groan as cogs and gears rumbled to lift and heavy redsteel chains lowered the lift deeper into the bowels of the earth.  
  
“Going down…going down…gooooooing dooooown,” Sara said to herself with a laugh, “I’d like to go down with you Lady Trevelyn. Ha ha ha! Did I say with? I meant on yeah?”  
  
Lydia smirked in the dark, “That could be arranged Sara.”  
  
“Inquisitor what are you two talking about?” Vorta asked.  
  
“Uh…nothing. Don’t worry about it Shaper,” Lydia said.  
  
But Sara yelled out, “We’re talking about rubbing bits together tonight at camp. I don’t think I’ve ever rubbed bits together underground before…oh wait! I did in a wine cellar at some rich prat’s manor house once…does that count?”  
  
“It counts,” Iron Bull said.  
  
“Well then, I’ve never rubbed bits together this far underground.“  
  
“Can you please stop talking about your bits?” Vorta pleaded.  
  
“Fine I guess so…” Sara said with a sigh, “You want to talk about your bits instead?”  
  
Vorta tugged her braid, folded her arms under breasts and shouted, “No!”  
  
 **Commercial Break  
**  
  
Thang Hobart was elite as fuck. There were huge statues of dwarves with sweet dwarf axes and dwarf sledge hammers all over the place. The fact that the statues were crumbling and covered in graffiti didn’t detract all that much from how impressive the scale of the entire place really was. The only thing that detracted from the overall ambience were the hordes of darkspawn marching through the corridors like they owned the damn place. Lydia wasn’t about to let them defile the dwarven thang any further and wrecked house on every darkspawn she and her murder squad came across. The left a trail of death and destruction behind them as the traveled from the lift through the once hallowed halls of Thang Hobart.  
  
“Man, this place must have been rad as fuck back in the day,” Gorbachev opined as he pulled his war axe out of the axefucked skull of a dead darkspawn bowflexer, “For all we know this could have been the brothel district right here! Think of it, all that sweet, sweet old school dwarven ‘tang right here!”  
  
“Ew dude, that’s gross!” Lydia exclaimed.  
  
“What?! You two have been talking about your vaginas since we came down here!” Gorbachev exclaimed.  
  
“Yeah but we’re ladies right? It's okay if we talk about our bits…when you do it, it’s kind of gross…especially when you call it tang. Tang? Ha ha ha! Who calls it tang yeah?” Sara nearly doubled over with laughter, but Gorbachev motioned for her to be quiet.  
  
“There’s something behind that crazyass door,” he said, “A lot of somethings… We should be careful.”  
  
Lydia took a gear out of her sack and placed it on the crazyass door and pulled the lever. The door groaned open revealing a goddamn raging inferno within. The flames danced and swayed in a hypnotic fashion. So hypnotic were they that Lydia nearly didn’t see the shrieks approaching until it was too late. The fast as fuck darkspawn leaped through the flames, a ball of flailing teeth and claws. Lydia slammed the pommel of her sword down into the fiend’s skull, smashing it down to the ground. In a flash the Iron Bull was upon the vile creature, axe chopping the shit out of it, but as the shriek died a bloody death, more leaped forward to take its place.  
  
“Shit, there are a lot of these wrong things aren’t there yeah?” Sara asked as she loosed arrow after arrow into the mob of darkspawn that assailed them at the doorway.  
  
“Come on, we need to press forward!” Gorbachev shouted, the lift should be at the end of this chamber. The chamber, unfortunately, was larger than the entirety of the Skyhold Dream Castle, and teeming with darkspawn of all sort. Also it was totally on fire.  
  
Through this mess of flames, smoke, and darkspawn swinging cruel barbed blades and wrought iron hammers, Lydia and her murder squad fought. Murdering the shit out of as many darkspawns as they could. Lydia could not tell precisely how much time had passed, only that he sword arm ached and her clothes were covered in darkspawn blood. After what seemed like an eternity, there was a brief respite in which the darkspawn ceased assailing Lydia and her friends. She breathed a sigh of relief while Dorian and Sara chugged potions.  
  
“Thank the Maker that’s done with,” Dorian said as he fixed his mustache which had come untwirled during the fast and furious fighting.  
  
“Heh,” Gorbachev scoffed, “It’s not over yet Six Pack. This kind of calm can only mean one thing…something bigger and badder than the crap we were just fighting is coming this way.” Suddenly a horrible roar filled the chamber, and as if on cue, a pair of ogres busted through a wall and started wrecking house on everyone in sight.  
  
Lydia shouted a lewd battle cry as she leaped into battle, chopping the shit out of one ogre’s shins. The ogres were hecka tough but Lydia’s crew was a jack up wrecking crew and they were able to knock the ogres the fuck out. Again Lydia and her friends breathed sighs of relief, but before they had time to break out celebratory potions to chug, a goddamn Darkspawn Alpha Emissary was all up in their collective grill. It was Lydia’s time to shine. Putting all her lyrium use and Templar training to use, she rocked the shit out of the emissary, blasting it with Templar beams that prevented it from casting spells, and slash chopping the hell out of it with her sweet replica elven Chopper Deluxe. It wasn’t long before the emissary was totally dead.  
  
Sara quickly looted the corpse, pulling heaps of costume jewelry and one particularly dog-eared book out of the emissary’s pockets. She leafed through the book briefly before declaring, “This shite is terrible yeah? Not only are there not any pictures, but it’s not even in English right? I mean if it were in French or whatever I might be able to kind of read it, but it’s in some crazy language yeah?” She tossed the book aside and Vorta shrieked.  
  
“That book! It has the seal of King Crux of Thang Hobart!” Vorta said as she picked up the tome and dusted it off, “Let me look at it.” She flipped through the pages for several moments before saying, “It’s in pretty bad shape, but look at this here. ‘The titans are totally a real thing that is real.’ Do you see that? Right in a book from the King’s court…it doesn’t get more official than that does it Gorbachev?”  
  
Gorbachev sighed, “No, I suppose it doesn’t. Anyway the lift’s right over there, but our maps beyond this point are pretty sketchy to be honest, and we’ve got no idea what’s down there. With those ogres and that emissary dead, I don’t think the darkspawn will bother us, so let’s camp it up here for the night and head down into the unknown tomorrow.”  
  
Everyone agreed that it was a good idea and thus the party made camp. The dined on a meager dinner of stew and dwarven hardtack and then, as they were all exhausted from battling hella darkspawn, retired to their tents for the night straight away. A silence came over the camp. A silence that was only broken by someone whispering, “Going down…going down...going down…” and the sound of muffled laughter.


	6. Dragon Age – S07E06 - Descent Part III

As the lift rumbled down the shaft from Thang Hobart into the unknown, Sara serenaded her companions with a raunchy ditty she had apparently penned about humping upon a lift. Lydia attempted to stifle a fit of laughter as Gorbachev glared at them in annoyance.  
  
  
  
“Be serious!” the serious dwarf intoned seriously, “We seriously have no idea what lurks down there and we don’t need to announce that we’re coming with stupid hump jams.”  
  
“I am being serious yeah?  But I get it...I really do yeah?  It’s totally the song about love in an elevator that’s going to tip off whatever sort of wrong things are living down there that they’ve got uninvited company yeah? Not this noisy as shite elevator thing we’re riding on…” Sara said with a sneer.  
  
But before she could continue to sing about, "livin' it up when you're going down," the lift came to a stop. The level upon which the found themselves was dark as fuck. There was no light visible save for the reflection of eyes glowing in the distance. Lydia readied her replica elven Chopper Deluxe and slowly made her way down a corridor. More than once she bumped into some, and often she heard the sound of something scurrying down the passageway ahead of her.  
  
“Shall I summon forth a magical light?” Dorian offered, “Or shall we continue to trip over each other and assume a grumpkin has got us by the jollysack when really we’ve just bumped into Sara’s boney backside.”  
  
“No!” Gorbachev shouted, “No lights! Do you want them to see us coming?”  
  
Dorian sighed and Sara exclaimed, “Hey Dorian! Are you talkin’ rubbish about my arse?” causing the Davinter mage to sigh again.   
  
The Davinter mage, with exasperation in his voice said, “No, I’m sure it’s a lovely bottom that brings much joy and happiness to our intrepid leader,” as everyone continued bumbling down the darkened path.  
  
The party can into a large chamber and the sound of feet upon stone grew ever louder. It was obvious to all that someone of something was in the chamber with them. Gorbachev growled, “OH WHOEVER YOU ARE…YOU ARE DEAD!!” And then gunfire. Shots rang out and muzzle flash blazed out of the darkness before again falling silent.  
  
“Is everyone okay?” Lydia asked.  
  
She soon had her answer. Gorbachev had a been shot in the gut. Blood oozed down his dwarven plate armor from the uzi wound. The stoic dwarf touched the hole with a finger, growled and threw himself into combat. Vorta saw her secret crush charge forward and shouted, “We gotta help him!”  
  
Lydia and her posse joined the double dwarves and chopped the shit out of the uzi wielding assailants that had assailed them with uzis. Lydia and Bull rushed forward all swords and axes chopping the shit out of shitty mini-uzi dudes. Uzi dudes tried to uzi the shit out of Lydia and her crew, but Lydia got all up in their grills and totally chopped off their hands with her sweet ass chopper deluxe. Mini uzi enthusiasts howled and were then set afire by Dorian, arrowed to high hell by Sara, or chopped to bits by Bull, Lydia, Vorta, and Gorbachev.  
  
Soon there was a heap of dead uzi dudes on the floor of the cave. Gorbachev took a step, once more touched his uzi gut wound and collapsed to the ground with them. Vorta ran to his side and shouted, “Oh Gorbachev! I was so concerned with finding a titan I never considered what else might be down here…and now you’re dead! WHY?! WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DIE?!”  
  
 **Commercial Break  
**  
  
A sadness had come over the party with the passing of noble Gorbachev. They had briefly considered turning back, but decided that going forward and getting revenge on the uzi wielding maniacs that called these forgotten caverns home would have been what Gorbachev would have wanted, and thus Lydia and her allies set off again.  
  
“I still can’t believe those uzi maniacs were other dwarves!” Vorta exclaimed as the party continued down the tunnels of the forgotten caverns miles beneath Thedas’ surface, “Dwarf on dwarf violence really needs to stop…”  
  
Lydia shrugged, “They were pretty much wearing lyrium jockstraps…maybe that’s why they were berserk. We had a mess of trouble with Templars whacked out on red lyrium awhile back. That shit’ll mess you up good.”  
  
Suddenly an explosion ripped through the caves and a bridge that they were just about to walk across totally collapsed into a raging river below. “HOLY FUCK! We almost were on that bridge!” Bull exclaimed.  
  
“That was no earthquake. Someone totally blew that up on purpose…” Vorta said. She glanced around a moment and then pointed towards a cave on a ledge nearby, “There. I think we can get across by going through that cave. Just be careful. The rocks might be loose down there.”  
  
Lydia scrambled down the rock with ease and waited for the rest of her posse to follow.  Sara and Vorta were able to scramble down the crumbling rocks fairly easily, but Bull and Dorian took far longer.  When Dorian finally stepped down onto the ledge, Lydia and her crew headed down a side passage.  The had walked perhaps 100 feet when Vorta stopped them.  
  
"Wait up dudes.  That thing on the wall...it totally looks like a Shaperate thing...it records the history of the dwarves that are living down here," she said, "But this dialect...it's all fucked up.  I can only make out a few words and phrases.  The phrase, 'the protectors of the titan,' comes up a few times, so it looks like my titan theory wasn't as historically unsound as at first we thought.  Look here...this say, 'the titan is the shaper of the stone.'  Maybe the titan created all this."  
  
"Then perhaps that's what the earthquakes are.  The titan change something it's built," Lydia offered.  
  
Vorta shook her head and said, "No.  I doubt that very much.  The earthquakes are destructive..."  
  
"Change often seems destructive," Lydia said with a shrug.  
  
"Either way, I'm certain now that we are on the right track," Vorta said, "But why would the Shaperate of Orzimar hide this information.  There's literally no information about these uzi dwarves or titans...or even this random chunk of caverns.  The dwarves were never as shitty as the elves...we never lost all of our history books...uh no offense elf girl."  
  
Sara shrugged, "I'm not an elfy elf right?  I don't really give a rat's arse about 'the old ways,' or whatever the face tat elves are always going on about."  
  
"So what now Vorta?" Lydia asked.  
  
"We still need to stop the earthquakes so I guess we gotta go deeper..."  
  
 **Commercial Break**  
 ****  
  
They went deeper.  
  
Deeper than the Deep Roads.  Deeper than the uzi dwarf murder tunnels.  Down into a strange, alien world like something out of a goddamn dream.  Strange trees that glowed a blue as glowful as the neon green chunk that glowed in her hand seemingly grew out of the otherwise barren rock surfaces.  
  
"Holy shit...those trees...they're pure lyrium!" Dorian said.  
  
"I wonder if that's what the uzi dwarfs and the titan are trying to protect.  The current earthquakes were happening in a lyrium mine, and if I remember correctly, Thang Hobart was also bring on lyrium mining," Lydia offered.  
  
"And don't forget those shites in the lyrium knickers yeah?" Sara added.  Dorian and Bull nodded and said, "Good answer...good answer."  
  
"I suppose," Vorta said in the most noncommittal way possible, "but let's look around some more before we jump to any sort of conclusion about weird uzi dwarfs hording lyrium...I am still like 937.2% sure they are protecting a legit titan."  
  
Lydia sighed and continued traipsing about in the hella deep caverns without and specific goal beyond confirming Vorta's random belief that a "titan" was causing the earthquakes that were wrecking house on the Inquisition's lyrium mine.  The crew encountered more uzi dwarves and took all kinds of gunfire.  Sara alone got hit like twelve dozen times by uzi bullets, but because of the power of love, Sara, unlike Gorbachev, didn't die like a chump.  
  
They went deeper.  
  
A shitty demon had killed a bunch of triceratops in a temple.  Lydia and her crew had no love for cave triceratops, but shitty demons were way worse, and prone to drop better loot, so they wrecked house on a shitty demon.  The loot he dropped was pretty alright.  Dorian stopped showing off his six pack because a much more rockin' robe was discovered in a closet in the temple, and there's nothing weird about wearing clothes found in a creepy demon temple in a forgotten abyss that houses cave triceratops and a hitherto unknown tribe of dwarves.  
  
But still Vorta's desire to find a titan was not sated.  
  
They went deeper.  
  
The uzi dwarves had erected might barriers of pure lyrium.  Neither physical might of magical prowess had any effect upon them.  
  
"We gotta find a way to bust up these barriers!" Vorta exclaimed, "I am 3,901% certain that the titan is past this barrier."  
  
Lydia had nearly had enough, but held her tongue.  "Fine, let's go kill more uzi dwarves.  Maybe one of them has a key or something we can use to bypass this barrier."  
  
Chopper Deluxe was ready to spill more blood.  It hungered for uzi dwarf blood, and Lydia was happy to oblige it.  She and her crew chopfucked the complete and utter shit out of a mess of uzi dwarves until they found some sort of crazy looking uzi dwarf hammer.  It seemed to glow blue with the power of blue lyrium and when Lydia walked by a random barrier, the barrier and the hammer exploded in a mess of exploding.  She had inadvertently discovered a means to bypass the lyrium barriers.  
  
They went deeper.  
  
An underground sea raged on both sides of the narrow walkway they found themselves upon.  Ahead Lydia could see the might of the uzi dwarves assembling.  They were guarding something.  Something undoubtedly important.  "It's probably the titan," Vorta said as the moved closer to destiny.  Of course she would think it was the titan.  "Titan," was pretty much the only word that had come out of her mouth since they'd descended past Thang Hobart.  Lydia wondered if it was a different dialect of dwarven.  Lydia had taken a semester of dwarven in middle school but that had been standard Orzimarian dwarven..."Sodding sodden sodders!" and the like.  
  
Bullets whizzed by fired from the uzi dwarves uzis as Lydia and her posse inched closer.  Sara took a shot in the arm, but merely gritted her teeth, nocked an arrow and fired it the length of the walkway.  The arrow buried itself in the neck of some uzi dwarf causing him or her to drop to their knees and grasp at their throat, trying to somehow coax their ruined throat into bringing in air again.  It would be a slow death.  
  
More bullets streaked by, answered by bowfire and actual fire from Sara and Dorian.  It was then Lydia saw it.  A massive lyrium barrier beyond the dwarves.  Whatever was in these depths...whatever was causing the earthquakes...Lydia was certain it would be found behind the barrier.  She turned to Bull and nodded and then the two warriors broke into a sprint, charging at the uzi dwarves with their mighty choppers swinging.  Scores of uzi dwarves fell to their might, but more quickly took their place.  
  
"We gotta blast the shit out of that wall!" Lydia shouted, "We need more of those hammers...a lot more!"  
  
"I'm all over it Buckles, like I'm all over your ladybits!" Sara shouted.  She fired another shot, threw a handful of caltrops and then skipped off to check the corpses of uzi dwarves for hammers.  Lydia knew that Sara would also take time to strip the corpses of anything of value, but she didn't really mind.  
  
More and more uzi dwarves descended upon Lydia and her crew.  They were running out of potions.  If Sara didn't find those hammers soon they were going to be in a heap of trouble.  An arrow suddenly tore through the skull of an uzi dwarf that had been creepin' all up on Lydia unbeknownst to her.  
  
"You promised me you wouldn't die, yeah?" Sara said, "Remember?  Anyway, I got a bunch of those hammer shites.  Now what?"  
  
"Now we blow up a walll!" Lydia said, "Come on!"  
  
She took Sara by the wrist and ran towards the lyrium barrier.  She could see it begin to glow brighter as whatever held the lyrium together in the construct began to fail, and then there was an explosion.  The remaining uzi dwarves saw heard the explosion and tried to haul ass, but Bull and Dorian cut them down before they could get away.  Behind the barrier there was a door, and behind that door was a small antechamber.  It was an easy enough place to defend, should the need arise, and thus the party drifted off to sleep, utterly exhausted from the events of the day...


	7. Dragon Age - S07E07 - Descent Part IV

Spicy Davinter chili bubbled in the pot that hung over the small campfire that Dorian had started. Having a mage who knew Fire1, Fire2, and Fire3 came in handy when making camp in a cavern pretty much devoid of things that could be set on fire. Lydia ladled out a bowl of chili for herself and was ladling a second bowl for Sara when the dwarven scholar, Vorta, approached her.  
  
"If my theory is correct, we're about to head down into so really serious shit. If we don't make it out alive, you'll tell Orzimar what we found here right?" the dwarf asked.  
  
"Don't be ridiculous," Lydia replied, "We're all going to get out of here alive and when this is all done you can go back to Orzimar and tell them about the uzi dwarves and whatever lies beyond this campsite yourself."  
  
Vorta sighed and said, "Maybe you're right. Maybe I am just nervous and overreacting, but in the words of the great dwarven Paragon, Han Solo, 'I've got a bad feeling about this.'"  
  
Lydia knew that feeling all to well: the nervousness in the pit of her stomach each time she set out on some zany adventure. She placed her bowl of chili down on a rock that was probably 100% pure lyrium and took the lady dwarf's hand in her own and said, "Vorta, I understand that you're nervous, but you need to stay hopeful. We can't go into a situation expecting to die."  
  
"I guess you're right. It's just that after Gorbachev died...I dunno...it doesn't feel as much like a fun dungeon delve as it used to," Vorta said, "Anyway, I'm sorry to bother you with this bullshit. I should try to get some sleep."  
  
The lady dwarf bowed slightly and walked off towards her bedroll as Sara walked up to the fire.  
  
"What was she on about?" Sara asked as Lydia handed her a bowl of chili, "She wasn't trying to get in your pants was she?"  
  
"No, nothing like that," Lydia replied, "She's just nervous about whatever sort of boss fight lies beyond that door."  
  
Sara, her mouth full of spicy chili, replied, "Makes sense I suppose. I used to get that way too yeah. You know what helped?"  
  
"No, what helped Sara?"  
  
"Rubbing bits together with you. After we started rubbing bits together the creepy demon shite and fiery dragons and wrong things started to seem a lot less scary, because I knew you wouldn't let any terrible shit happen to me yeah?"  
  
"Sara, that's oddly touching."  
  
"So...you wanna rub bits together?"  
  
"What? Here? There aren't even tents."  
  
"Don't worry about it yeah? We've got a couple bedrolls and I don't think Dorian or Bull really care about what we do."  
  
Lydia glanced across camp. Vorta was already fast asleep and Dorian and Bull were conversing with each other in low whispers. She sighed and looked Sara in the eye and said, "Alright Sara...but try to be quiet okay?"  
  
"What? I'm always quiet yeah?"  
  
**Commercial Break  
**  
  
The next morning the party set off into the unknown depths of the abyss. It was hella disappointing.  
  
"What the crap is this?" Vorta asked, "There's not even a single Titan. Fuck! Gorbachev's dead and you guys wasted all kinds of time down here and there's not even a single goddamn Titan! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"  
  
"Vorta, calm down...we don't know there isn't a Titan down here. We've barely looked around. Maybe the Titan is down this passageway," Lydia said.  
  
"Maybe you're right."  
  
At that moment a crew of uzi dwarves ran all up ons trying to put Lydia's crew on blast, but Lydia and her friends were on point like a decimal and wrecked all kinds of house on the uzi dwarves.  
  
Lydia pointed to the heap of bloody meat that was but moments earlier a mess of uzi dwarves lying before them and said, "See, would a mess of uzi dwarves run all up ons if there wasn't a Titan chillin' like Bob Dylan on penicillin somewhere down here. So what do you say Vorta?"  
  
"Let's keep going."  
  
The crew pressed on delving deeper in the abyss of the unknown. In these lower levels someone, possibly uzi dwarves, possibly a goddamn Titan, had constructed a great city of catwalks and bridges that spanned a seemingly bottomless pit. The construction was like none Lydia had ever seen; different even from the crumbling Dwarven architecture she had seen back in Thang Hobart.  
  
In the center of the seemingly bottomless pit there sat, upon a platform, a great heart shaped crystalline structure that seemed to pulse with energy.  
  
"That thing there," Lydia said as she pointed towards the crystal, "Maybe that's what these uzi dwarves are protecting."  
  
"Maybe you're right..." Vorta said with disappointment in her voice, "I suppose if we can't discover Titans a giant glowing crystal deal is the next best thing."  
  
And with that Lydia and her posse of misfits descended deeper into the unknown, scrambling over ancient catwalks that perhaps none save uzi dwarves had ever set foot upon.  
  
Their descent to the crystal was not an easy one for uzi dwarves attempted to wreck their shit time and time again. So many bullets ripped through the air, cutting through flesh and scarring the walls of the ancient city with bullet induced pockmarks. But the descent had hardened Lydia and friends and uzi wielding dwarves no longer phased them. Each group of uzi dwarves that stepped found their shit completely and utterly fucked over in short order.  
  
After a time the posse came to a plaque written in the crazy uzi dwarf dialect. Vorta, again, could make out little of it but estimated that it said something about "drinking the blood of 'The Shaper' to become pure."  
  
"'The Shaper' must be the Titan!" Vorta exclaimed.  
  
"But what blood are they talking about? I don't see any blood. Besides, you need a heart if you're going to have blood," Lydia said apparently having forgotten the goat crystal heart in the center of the pit.  
  
"Oh. My. God. The lyrium! That's the blood...which means...we've been inside the Titan the entire time!"  
  
**Commercial Break  
**  
  
The party crossed the ancient bridge towards the giant crystal heart. There was an odd hum in the air and the crystal seemed to pulse with life. Lydia gulped, and wondered to herself what would happen when they got near the crystal heart. She soon had her answer as a blast of blue beam shot out from the heart nailing Vorta and sending her sprawling. The heart then summoned a heap of rock chunks and stood up. It was shaped like a rock octopus with tentacles and grossness and rock whips and it was pretty much the worst.  
  
"IT'S BATTLE TIME!" Lydia shouted and rushed towards the rock monster.  
  
Swords were swung and spells were cast, but the rock monster was hella tough. It put Lydia's crew on blast, smacking the crap out of everyone with its rock octopus tentacles. Lydia hulked up and did a big swing, slashing at the rock octopus tentacles with her replica elven chopper deluxe. It was super effective! The tentacles fell away in a heap of being just regular rocks, leaving the rock octopus' body vulnerable to total ownage, which is precisely what Lydia and her friends delivered. Bull axed chopped the shit out of the rock octopus while Dorian shot beams of wizard shit at it and Lydia and Sara stood out of range and chugged healing potions. There was a great and sudden blast of wizard shit as the rock octopus exploded into a million and three pieces of stone. As the rubble rained down upon them, Vorta recovered from being knocked the fuck out and stood slowly.  
  
"Yo Vorta are you alright? You got owned pretty hard by some wizard shit," Lydia asked the dwarf.  
  
"I'm fine..." Vorta said, but suddenly blasts of blue beam wizard shit shot out of her hands and nailed Lydia.  
  
Lydia had been hit with all kinds of wizard shit in her day and had built up something of an immunity to it, but the dwarf's blue beam still knocked Lydia on her ass. She stood, and gingerly rubbed her bottom. There would be a bruise. "Um...what the hell was that?" she asked, "You just blasted me with wizard shit...but you're a dwarf and dwarves can't do magic."  
  
"Oh that...I guess the Titan chose me," Vorta said, "I'm pure or something apparently."  
  
"Um...okay?" Lydia said, "So I guess we should probably head back now. You might want to get checked out by a mage or something to make sure whatever that blue beam was didn't royal fuck you over."  
  
"Nah, I'm going to stay down here," Vorta replied, "It's what the Titan wants."  
  
"Okay...what should I tell Orzimar?" Lydia asked.  
  
"Tell them the truth...that you have no idea what the hell happened down here," Vorta replied, "Anyway, thanks for your help Inquisitor. Now if you'll excuse me I have work to do."  
  
With the Vorta headed off across a bridge, deeper into the mysterious abyss. Lydia looked at her companions and shrugged. It was Dorian who spoke first, "So, we're done here? Can we please go back to the surface? I'm beginning to forget what sunlight looks like."  
  
The journey back to the surface was pretty uneventful. A couple more uzi dwarves were wrecked and some cave triceratops were smashed, but that was about it, and two days later, Lydia and her comrades stepped off a lift back into the Legion of Dead  & Inquisition joint camp. Scout Harding was there. She looked relieved to see Lydia and the others, causing Lydia to smile, until Scout Harding revealed the true reason she was glad to see her allies.  
  
"Ha! I told you she'd come back! Pay up Bashful!"


	8. Dragon Age - S07E08 - Dear Kieran

Lydia Trevelyn forked another forkful of flapjack into her foodhole. It had been far too long since she’d had anything other than Davinter chili to eat. She should have been savoring each morsel of the flapjack, but she wasn’t, she was just shoveling flapjacks in as quickly as the waitress could bring them out. As she choked down another forkful, Cullen walked over and sat down across from her.  
  
“We received word from our joint expedition with the Legion of the Dead late last night,” he said as he poured himself a mug of coffee, “The entrance to Titan or whatever that underground city you, Dorian, Sara and Bull all insist you discovered with Vorta was totally caved in. It would take a shit ton of equipment and manpower to bust the rocks up, so, but the earthquakes have stopped and the flow of lyrium, for those of you who partake, continues unabated, so I’m going to say we will never know the entire story about Titan or Vorta…”  
  
Lydia shrugged, and with a mouth filled to capacity with flapjack, declared, “S’all right…I got this boss armor. Oh, did you guys figure out that ice wall problem out in Frostfang Basin while I was gone?”  
  
“We tried marching around it, but that didn’t seem to do anything,” Cullen said, “I was thinking, maybe you should ask that witch…you know, with the boobs…she seems to know about all kinds of zany wizard shit.”  
  
“Oh man! Cullen I could kiss you!” Lydia exclaimed, “You are a goddamn genius! Sideboob will totally have some sort of crazy, ‘Tis ancient magicks from ages long since passed,’ that will surely melt a wall of ice so I can go in an crushinate Avaar asslords.”  
  
Lydia stood and power walked out of The New & Improved Monks Diner as Cullen looked at her longingly. “I thought she was going to kiss me…” he thought to himself glumly.  Stress eating promptly followed...  
**  
Commercial Break**  
  
  
Lydia headed out to the gardens where Sideboob and Son of Sideboob usually hung out, but found no one there besides the usual assortment of old French nuns who hated Dorian and that weird elven botanist lady. Lydia scratched her chin. Maybe Sideboob had returned to her magical elf mirror in the storage closet.  Lydia crossed the Skyhold Dream Castle campus to the magic mirror storage closet, but the usually bib-clad witch of the wilds was nowhere to be found. In her stead Lydia saw Leliana standing before the great magic mirror, which had been activated.  
  
The one time bard of Orleans caught sight of Lydia and was like, “Oh good, it’s you! Kieran apparently went into the mirror and Sideboob went in after him! They’ve been gone a longass time and I’m worried about them, but not worried enough to go in after them. Maybe you could go scope out the scene. You’ve been in these mirrors before if I recall.”  
  
Lydia sighed and said, “Alright, but just so you know, I really hate these magic mirrors and random Fade shit and all this ancient magical mystery crap.  Oh, and by the way, who’s Kieran?”  
  
“You are not serious are you? You truly do not know who Kieran is? He is Sideboob’s son.”  
  
“Oh…that makes sense I guess,” Lydia said, “Anyway, I’m off to the inside of a mirror. Smell ya later.”  
  
Steeling herself, Lydia stepped forward into the wavering mists and when she emerged on the other side she found herself not in that weird magically mirror terminus, but rather in the Fade. To make matters all the more terrible, she was once more apparently there in the flesh.  
  
“Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit…….” Lydia moaned, “Not the goddamn Fade…”  
  
  
Lydia shrugged at her bad misfortune and walked forward into the stupid, dumbass Fade. It was not long before she found the bibbed, sideboob baring witch of the wilds standing in the midst of the neon green Fade shit screaming, “Kieran! O! Where art thou Kieran?”  
  
“Yo Sideboob what’s crackin’ baby?” Lydia asked, “How come we’re in the goddamn Fade instead of that roomful of skeleton trees and big ass busted up mirrors?”  
  
“I haven’t any idea,” Sideboob said, “’Twas Kieran’s doing. How he caused the eluvian to bring us to this place I cannot fathom, but we must find him. Oh…this is the goddamn Fade…he could literally be anywhere!”  
  
“Don’t worry Sideboob,” Lydia said, trying to comfort the distraught witch of the wilds, “We’ll find Son of Sideboob.”  
  
**Commercial Break  
**  
  
God alrighty, did Lydia hate the Fade. Gross neon green humanoids floated about aimlessly and there were wrong things all over the place. Perhaps the only good thing was the fact that no weird Fade demons were all that interested in her and trying to ruin her shit.  
  
She and Sideboob had walked for what seemed an eternity when the witch suddenly cried out, “Kieran!”  
  
Lydia looked up and saw that Son of Sideboob was indeed standing a few feet in front of them before yet another eluvian with some weird looking old lady with crazy Dragon Ball Z hair. Sideboob, caught sight of the old weird and she seemed to recognize the old biddy, but she did not look pleased to see her.  “You!” she spat venomously, “You brought him here! You shall not have him! I shall not allow it!”  
  
“Ha!” the old lady laughed in a most Krabappel-esque fashion, “Like you can tell me anything. I control you, you stupid girl.”  
  
“Yo, old bag, I don’t give a shit about this shit, just give the boy back and I won’t wreck house on you,” Lydia said.  
  
Another laugh of Krabapppelian proportions echoed through the stupid Fade and the old bag spoke, "Foolish girl, do you truly not know who I am? Has my good for nothing daughter truly spoken naught of me?"  
  
"Alright you're Mom of Sideboob. What of it? I'm not above wrecking house on an old lady," Lydia said, "Particularly kidnapping hags with grossly improbable hairdos."  
  
"My name is Flemith and it has become quite clear to me that either you are somewhat touched in the head and have the attention span of a gnat or you merely are woefully uninformed about the matters in which you now find yourself entangled," the ancient crone rasped.  
  
Lydia gasped, "Holy shit! Flemith? The witch who some spirit helped to punk out some noble douchelord in Feldspar? My mom used to tell me you were going to come and eat my flesh in the night every time she caught me making out with serving girls. I thought you were a myth."  
  
The old hag smiled a gnarly smile of broken yellowed teeth that looked more like something that belonged to an animal than a woman. "Dear girl I am much more than that...much more perhaps than even my fool daughter can understand."  
  
Sideboob sighed, "The only thing I don't understand is how you found us. For ten years I saw neither hide nor hair of you. How did you find us now?"  
  
Again that wicked Krabapppelian cackle of, "Ha!" echoed through the goddamn Fade. "You, you stupid girl. You drank freely of the Well of Sorrows in spite the warnings and that lead me directly to you as it would to all my thralls."  
  
Lydia's jaw dropped and her mouth hung open a moment before she uttered, "Holy fucking shit...you're Mythral! Oh man it is so good Sara's not here right now. She would be flipping the fuck out."  
  
"What?!" Sideboob shouted, "You expect me to believe you are some kind of ancient elven goddess? How?"  
  
"That story your dunderheaded little lesbian friend's mother told her was more or less the truth of it. I was Flemith, a woman scorned, until a spirit came and helped me obtain my revenge. What the stories all neglect to mention is that the spirit in question was the soul of an elven god. Of Mythral. So you can understand why there is perhaps no one better than I to help this child comprehend what it means to possess the soul of an Old God."  
  
"Wait, what? That boy is some kind of a god? That doesn't make sense...does it?" Lydia said. She could perhaps buy an ancient old crone as some kind of divine being from antiquity, but Son of Sideboob was a polite, somewhat better than average looking,but otherwise unremarkable boychild. This was madness.  
  
"My mother, or whatever she is, speaks true of this. Kieran does indeed possess the soul of an old God, though how Flemith knows I cannot say as none knew of his nature save for myself and the Grey Warden, Odette Corvette. Not even the boy's natural father knows of what Kieran truly is, but this matters not right now.  I shall tell you the entire lurid tale at a later time if you so desire, for now I need my son back!  Please mother, I beg of you, let Kieran go.  He is but a small boy and needs his mother, regardless of what you think he is."  
  
The boy glanced up and, with a accent that could not have been any more Feldsparian if it had a mabari warhound leashed to it, said, "Mother I have to go..."  
  
"No you don't Kieran.  Come.  Let us return home."  
  
Flemith laughed again.  It was a cold, wicked laugh, "Stupid girl.  You hid for a time, quite well I might add, but never again shall you be able to hide from me as you did before.  When you drank of the well you pretty much installed a GPS in yourself.  I will always know where you are."  
  
Lydia had, had enough.  She usually found children to be quite loathsome, but Kieran had proven himself to be not entirely horrible, and moreover Flemith's shitty treatment of Sideboob brought to mind her own terrible mother back in Ostwick.  She raised her hand read to blast a beam of neon green and shouted, "Listen you old hag, the boy comes back with us!  Sideboob's like in her mid-30s or something...you can't boss her around anymore!  So, eat it!"  Her hand glowed that terrible neon green glow, but before she could shoot her hand beam, the world went black.  
  
Flemith smirked as Lydia's body collapsed to the ground a moment after Sideboob cast a spell upon her.  
  
"Mother, please, I shall do whatever you ask, just let Kieran come back home with me," Sideboob pleaded, "I'm begging you."  
  
"Oh very well.  Quit groveling it's very unbecoming," Flemith replied, "He may go back with you, but before he does there's one thing I must do."  
  
The ancient elven god spirit lady raised her hand to Kieran's and in an instant he was surrounded by a blue glow and a small blue orb emerged from him that Flemith took in her hand.  She then turned and walked into the eluvian and vanished from sight.  
  
Kieran ran back to Sideboob and threw his arms around her.  "Mother I feel different...like perhaps I shall never dream again," he said, "Mother...are you alright?  You look sad."  
  
Slowly Lydia rose to her feet.  Her head pounded as though it had been smashed by an Avaar hammer bro.  She touched it gingerly and moaned, "Uggg...what happened to me?  My head feels like it was broken open and stuffed with insects wielding tiny hammers."  
  
Sideboob smirked, "Perhaps what my mother said of herself is true.  Perhaps she is a god and was somehow able to turn your own magicks against yourself.  I myself, of course, found your chosen course of action incredibly rash and foolhardy...but also quite brave...and selfless.  So I thank you.  I have always been a woman of few friends, and yet somehow in the short time I have known you, you have proven yourself to be a true friend indeed.  Come, let us return to Skyhold, for we still have an ancient darkspawn's demise to plan for."  
  
As they began to walk back towards their eluvian Lydia asked, "Yeah, about that.  You don't happen to know how to get into some kind of ice fortress in the Frostfang Basin do you?  We're supposed to kick some Avaar ass there, but they've sealed themselves in with some kind of old school wizard shit that no one knows how to dispel."  
  
"Ah that.  Yes, I have heard of that place...tis said that no magic of this age has ever penetrated its wintry carapace," Sideboob said, gently tousling her son's hair as they approached the eluvian, "I am quite sorry to say that I, too, am at a loss as to how to melt that ice."  
  
"Damn."  
  
**To Be Continued...  
  
Director's Commentary: ** So this was a fun chunk of plot, even if it was a goddamn plot dump.  I guess Flemith is legit a god or has a demon/spirit in her a la so many other mages in this series which was kind of surprising.  I wish I could have thrown down on her in the Fade rather than get knocked the fuck out by Morrigan plot style, but that's neither here nor there.  Coming up next time is the conclusion of Jaws of Harkon and then it's Beat the Main Game, so stick around...it's going to be balla deluxe!  Oh and because now I can take screen shots of crap via a PS4 rather than point my phone at a tv, here's a picture of what Lydia actually looks like.  
  



	9. Dragon Age - S07E09 - The Life & Times of Inquisitor Armadillo

**Cold Open  
** It was muggy as fuck in the Inquisition Camp in the Frostfang Basin.  Lydia stood before her crew and held aloft her Lisa Frank, _Two Kittens_ binder and said, "Now I'm sure you are all wondering what this binder is and how it's going to help us get through that goddamn ice wall so we can chopfuck the shit out of those Jaws of Harkon assholes..."  
  
  
  
"That's your sex fantasy journal yeah?" Sara said, "I haven't thought about that thing since...well, since before we started actually rubbing bits together yeah?  You still fancy Josie?  I mean I'd be game for what those prats in Orleans call a 'melange or twah,' with Josie.  I bet she's right fit under all that lacy shit yeah?"  
  
Lydia stared at her party, slackjawed a moment before she laughed nervously and said, "Sara, I have no idea what you're talking about.  This is just a regular journal filled with notes about tasks we've been tasked with.  Think of it like a day planner..."  
  
"A whut?"  
  
"A schedule...anyway, I was looking at my notes about this Inquisitor Armadillo nonsense and there's absolutely nothing about fighting Avaar in some kind of magical ice fortress.  All I've got written down is something about sailing out to an island where he was last seen alive, so what I'm thinking is we got totally sidetracked on some random bullshit, as is par for the course and that ice wall is completely unimportant to the main reason we came here in the first place."  
  
"That seems about right," Dorian interjected, "So, let us not waste a moment more talking about whatever it is you two are plotting to do to poor Josephine..."  
  
Bull laughed loudly and whispered something in Dorian's ear.  The Davinter mage's face went white and he looked as though he might have vomited.  "Really?  Three of them?  One is repulsive enough...but three?!  How would it even work?"  The Qunari warrior laughed again and said that he would explain it later.  
  
Lydia sighed and picked up her replica elven chopper deluxe and shouldered it.  "Come on you guys.  I think we've got a lot of questing ahead of us today."  
  
**Opening Credits  
**   
"Oi you shiteating cumstain of a cockmonger give us fish and booze or we're torching your piece of shit fish shack and making you wear this polo shirt while we hump yer wife!" a gruff voice of an Avaar bellowed a short way up the path.  
  
"I thought the Jaws of Harkon were bad enough when they were just slaughtering our scouts and raiding our supply depots, but to threaten a man with a cuckold shirt...got damn!   That is cold as ice," the Iron Bull said as he eased his axe from its holster, "What do ya say Boss?  Ready to chopshit the fuck out of these guys?"  
  
Lydia had not actually been paying attention to Bull as she was already in the thick of it, her face a crimson mask of Jaws of Harkon blood.  Severed limbs and assorted meat chunks already littered the ground around her feet.  Bull smiled at her and charged in, slamming a broad shoulder into a Harkonite douchelord as hard as he could.  Bone crunched and the Harkonite dropped to the group and writhed in pain.  His clavicle was, more likely than not, utterly ruined.  Lydia brought up a sabaton clad foot and slammed it into the wounded Harkonite's face with a satisfactory crunch and an explosion of blood and gore as the Avaar's head was totally crushinated.  
  
She looked around and saw that Dorian and Sara had made short work of the other Harkonites.  Bodies pierced with arrows or burninated beyond recognition lay strewn about, and in the doorway to the fish shack stood a swarthy looking man with well knuckled hands.  He had the look of a fisherman about him.  An equally swarthy woman stood beside him.  
  
"Hail and well met lowlander," the fisherman called out, "I am much obliged for the asswhooping you laid down on these goddamn Harkonites.  If there's anything I can do to help you in return, just ask."  
  
"I need to get out to that island out there," Lydia said, pointing at the island a short distance from the shore that she needed to get to.  
  
"Sorry friend, but that's the Lady's island," the fisherman said, "Weird shit happens out there and no one goes out there ever comes back."  
  
Lydia looked at the fisherman and his fishwife and said, "Dude...I pretty much saved you from getting cuckolded.  You kind of owe me."  
  
The fisherman sighed, "Alright.  Alright.  You speak true so I'll help you.  I've got an old canoe over on the docks.  You're welcome to it, but I'm warning you friend, be careful out there.  It is some creepy ass shit."  
  
"I'll be careful," Lydia offered.  
  
"You'll be dead!"  
  
Lydia shrugged and headed over to the canoe and got in.  "Anyone do crew in high school?" she asked as she sat down.  
  
Dorian rose his hand and declared, "I was the coxswain of my university's team."  
  
Lydia nodded and said, "Alright Dorian, it's all up to you then.  Get us out to that island."  
  
Dorian muttered something in Davinter, a curse undoubtedly, and climbed into the canoe and took up an oar and began rowing.  The island was not so far from the shore and it was perhaps 10 minutes or so until Bull had jumped out of the canoe and dragged it up onto the shore to prevent it from floating off.  
  
The island was pretty much barren, save for some scraggly bushes and a ramshackle shack that had seen better days...and a mess of spirits just floating about muttering creepy shit under their breath.  Bull and Sera cast sideways glances.  Lydia knew that neither of them wanted to be there.  She didn't blame them.  She didn't want to be there either, but if this was the only way to kill a horacrux dragon and beat Coprophilia once and for all, she would traipse about crazy spirit island.  
  
"Whatever we're looking for is undoubtedly in that ramshackle shack, so let's start there," Lydia said as a red ghost thing floated by moaning about fire, "Since Solas and Cole aren't here, I think we can all agree the less time we spend here the better."  
  
Everyone nodded in agreement and the party head up the small hill that the ramshackle shack sat upon.  The shack was little more than pillars and the rotten remains of a thatched roof.  Bits of wall remained, but even they were crumbling.  Within the ramshackle shack they found a green glowing humanoid.  Lydia hoped it was a spirit rather than a demon.  She didn't fully understand the distinction between the two herself, beyond knowing that spirits were generally less likely to attempt to murder her from the get go.

"Oh Armadillo what has delay you so?" the spirit said to no one in particular.  It suddenly seemed to notice Lydia and her friends and turned to them, "Oh have you news of Armadillo?  Has he sent you here for me?"

"I'm sorry, I don't know who you are," Lydia said, "Is Armadillo expecting you?"

"I would assume so.  I am Telana, Armadillo's paramour," the spirit said, "I have been waiting here for my love to return a long, long time.  I am so very tired."

Lydia paused.  She was going to have to tell a spirit that her boyfriend had died some 800 years ago.  She sighed, an thought to herself, "I guess this is as good a time as any to put that spirits don't attack people outright theory to the test," and then said to the spirit, "Uh...Telana, I'm hella sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Armadillo's dead...like really dead.  800 years or so, by our best estimate.  The thing is, we don't actually know what happened to him though.  That's what we're trying to figure out.  Maybe he said something to you before he last left?  Something about where he was headed?"

"That is sad news indeed, but not entirely unexpected.  No, my Armadillo would never have left me here to wait so long.  I suppose I always knew.  I thank you kind lady for bring me this news, sorrowful though it is.  As to your question, it is something of a haze after all these years.  I recall a river and metal spires...a quest for the King of Orleans...and little more than that.  I am oh so tired.  I mustn't tally here any longer.  I must sleep.  Goodbye kind lady," the spirit said, and with that she vanished, leaving behind a treasure box containing a book, a bow, and a scroll that bestowed upon Lydia the ability to generate force fields that protected her and her friends from projectiles.

They put this ability to the test a moment later when a group of Harkon archers ran all up on and launched a volley of arrows at Lydia and her friends.  From within the force field they watched the arrows bounce harmlessly away.  Sara, as usually said what everyone else was thinking, "This probably would have been cracking to have had against those uzi dwarves yeah?  Maybe that Gorbachev guy would still be alive and that Vorta bird would have gone half mental and decided she was a titan..."

"Possibly Sara...possibly."

**Commercial Break**

 

"So Telana and Armadillo were lovers?!" the Professor was beside himself, "She was an elf which I suppose is why the Chantry would have subsequently excised any mention of their personal relationship.  They Chantry isn't too keen on interracial relationships between elves and humans."

Sara scowled at the Professor, causing him to apologize.  She then turned towards Lydia and said, "You won't let them do that to us will you Buckles?  When some smart prat sits down and writes about what we did I don't want it to just be like 'There was also some elf girl with a bow name Sara or Sora or something who hung around with Lady Trevelyn.'"

"I don't want that either Sara."

"We should get Varric to write it," Sara suggested, "He wouldn't erase me and you...us.  He'd tell the truth about us...because he's...shit...what's the word?  Truthy.  Varric is truthy as shit yeah?"

"I'll talk to him about it when we get back to Skyhold," Lydia offered and for the first time she thought about what the legacy of all this would be.  She cared little if she was remember or not, but if the people did remember her and her friends she wanted them to remember her as she really was, not as some impossible hero.  Though she doubted it would happen.  The Hero of Feldspar was still alive and well and her legend had already grown to include the impossible...events that Leliana claimed never actually happened when questioned about them.  The same was true with Hawke.  Varric and Cullen both claimed that there was an entire brothel where the employees claimed to have once bedded the Champion of Kirkwall.  Impossible tales.

"So did Telana's spirit offer up any clues as to where we might find Armadillo?" the Professor asked, apparently unconcerned with how historians would remember Lydia Trevelyn and her elven lover.

"She could only recall that he was on a quest for the King of Orleans and she said something about a river and some sort of metal spires.  I assume they were talking about that river with all the spider here in the Basin.  I guess we can go scout it out and see if we can find anything with metal spires," Lydia said.

The Professor beamed and exclaimed, "That's fantastic!  Well then I won't keep you a moment longer.  I am eager to see what else you can uncover.  Already what you have learned about Telana will rewrite much of history, to say nothing of Armadillo's descendants now possibly being elf-blooded!  Oh this information will send shockwaves throughout Thedas!"

Lydia nodded and headed out of the Professor's temporary domicile.  Out of the Inquisition camp she and her fellows headed, through the sweltering heat and swamp-loin inducing humidity to the river that ran sluggishly through the Frostfang Basin.  Lydia turned to her comrades and said, "Okay dude's we're following this river...keep your eyes peeled for metal spires...and goddamn Avaar Hammer Bros...and spiders...god, please let me know if you see any spiders!  Or better yet, just kill the spiders before I see them.  That would be good."

Up the river they traveled, occasionally stopping to slay Avaar assholes or burninate spider heaps.  The sun was already beginning its descent when the Iron Bull pointed and called out, "Hey Boss, I think I found your metal spires.  Check that out up there."  Lydia looked and there, atop a mountain, she saw an ancient fortress, its metallic spires rising into the air like daggers.

"It's Davinter by the look of it," Dorian said, "God do my countrymen build ugly ass buildings.  I suppose we should hike up there.  How much do you want to bet there are a heap of those Harkonites up there roasting a goat...or having relations with a goat?"

"No one's stupid enough to take that bet Dorian.  We all know those Avaar shits are up their rubbing their bits together and being all gigantic and shit, so let's just go up there and arrow the shit out of 'em and be done with this yeah?  I need to go back to camp and air my bits out..."

"Not really information I asked for or cared to here, but I concur.  We should get this done as quickly as possible," Dorian said.

Up the mountain Lydia and her posse of badasses scrambled, the sun sinking ever lower in the sky.  It was not long before they heard the bleating of goats and the raucous laughter of Harkonites.  Lydia readied her replica elven chopper deluxe and charged forward, catching the Avaars off guard.  She cut two down in a single slash of her mighty blade before the camp knew what was happening.  Avaar hammer bros. scrambling to pull up their pantaloons and fetch their hammers were suddenly engulfed in flames and Dorian and the others joined in the fray.

Arrows rained down from Avaar archers position in towers around the camp, but Lydia waved her hands, causing a force field to issue forth that deflected the archers missiles.  From inside the safety of the force field, Sara shot arrow upon arrow at the enemy archers shouting, "Eat it!  Ate it!" with glee as she went about her task.  It wasn't long before the camp was cleared.

"We should probably send word back to that Professor dude back at camp," Lydia said, "I'm sure he'll want to investigate the fort here, besides I'm tired as hell.  So let's send a pigeon and rest here for the night."

**Commercial Break**

Scout Harding and the Professor had arrived in the early morning hours and the Professor was eager to investigate the fortress, looking for a burial site for Inquisitor Armadillo.  So after yet another breakfast of Davinter chili and stale bread heels, Lydia and her posse (which now included Scout Harding and the Professor) set off to explore the ruins on the ancient Davinter fortress.  The ruins were still looking pretty good for being over 800 years old, with very few of the walls crumbling.  For as critical Dorian was of the aesthetics of the place even he found himself begrudgingly admit that the fortress had been "well built...if incredibly ugly."

After some shenanigans involving "veilfire" that Lydia didn't understand, Dorian opened a sealed chamber revealing a room that very nearly caused the Professor to jizz in his pants.  "Holy fucking shit!" the Professor ejaculated, "This room...it has statues to both Andraste and that elven goddess...the one with the deer....Ga...Ga...Ga something or other.  Shit what is her name?"

Lydia looked at Sara in askance.  "Sara?"

"Ghilan'nain," she said and everyone stared at her, their mouths agape, "Whut?  Don't you all look at me like that yeah?  I know stuff too alright?"

The Professor merely nodded, "Yes, yes...Ghilan'nain.  This means that Armadillo and Telana must have come here together to pray before battle.  This is truly amazing.  Not only was Armadillo involved with an elf, but it seems that the first Inquisition was at least tolerant of those who followed religions other than the Chant of Light.  This is going to change so much already.  Hold on what does this inscription say here?  'To move beyond the frozen wall use the laser cannons.  The first one is here in this fortress.'  I have no idea what that could possibly mean, but perhaps it will lead us to Armadillo's resting place, for he does not seem to be buried here."

"Oh my God," Lydia exclaimed, "Those laser cannons...those will get us into that fortress behind the ice wall!  Come on dudes, we've got work to do!"

Lydia turned and walked over the the laser cannon and turned it on, a neon green bolt of energy shot forth from it into the wilds of the Basin, charging up another cannon at the foot of the mountain.  Apparently the range of the cannon was rather limited, but Lydia quickly realized what she was going to have to do.  She would have to send the laser beam across the Basin using the strange laser cannons she had seen in her travels until she was able to put the ice wall on blast.

As she and her companions headed out of the ancient Davinter fortress, the Professor was like, "Dudes, if you get into that other fortress, keep your peepers peeled for Armadillo's resting place.  Perhaps he is chilling out in that other fortress, all corpsed up."

Lydia said she would look and headed back down the mountain to the laser cannon at the foot of the mountain.  The once silent cannon now crackled and sparked with energy.  Again Lydia threw a switch and a blast of neon green beam beamed across the Basin to another cannon well off in the distance.  It would be a long day of tromping across the Frostfang Basin shooting laser cannons, but Lydia was all but certain she'd found a way to bypass that damned ice wall that had so poleaxed her advisers and the various mages and wizards she knew.

\---

The sun was quite low in the sky as Lydia climbed up a modest hill a short distance from the great icy wall.  Neon green energy danced within the dragon shaped cannon, causing the stylized eyes to glow a green as neon as the piece of shit thing in her own hand.  Lydia threw the lever and a great blast of neon green laser shot forth, slamming into the ice wall.  Lydia had expected it to merely melt the wall, but instead there was a great explosion and the wall burst asunder sending a cascade of ice chunks crashing down, crushinating the Avaar guards who had been unfortunate enough to guard the structure.

Bull slapped a giant hand against her back, "Good shootin' Boss.  What's the plan now?"

"We go in and kick the shit out of who or whatever is inside," Lydia replied.

"It's a decent start to a plan," the Qunari mercenary said, "I've raided enough fortresses and castles to know that it's going to take a lot more than the four of us to get in there without dying.  We should go ask Stonebear Keep to get our backs."

Lydia scratched her chin and said, "Bull, we captured Forts Badass I, II, and III with just the four of us.  I don't really see how this will be any different."

"Hammer bros." the Iron Bull replied.

"Good point.  Let's go talk to Clan Stonebear."

  **Commercial Break**

"Clan Stonebear stands with you Inquisitor," the clan chieftain said, "The Jaws of Harkon have gone far enough...first kidnapping Stuttgart and now trying to bring Harkon to life in mortal form.  We cannot abide by this.  We shall raid them come nightfall, under cover of dark.  Your Inquisition forces will create a diversion in the west while we assault the main fortress.   Ready yourselves."

Lydia and her posse headed out of the chieftain's manor house and checked their gear and restock potions while Stonebear Avaar readied war axes and mighty Avaar hammers for the assault soon to come.  She was uncertain exactly how much time had passed, but she and her companions, along with Stuttgart the bear and a gang of Stonebear Avaar were soon climbing silently up mountain passes towards the ancient fortress once covered in ice.  Once near the fort, a crew of Avaar scaled the walls, killed some guards, and opened the gates.

"Well it's now or never guys," Lydia said, "REGULATORS!!!!  MOUNT UP!"

And with that she, Iron Bull, Dorian, and Sara began to fight their way into the icy keep.  Avaar were everywhere and Lydia had a hard time telling friend from foe since the Avaar wore no distinct uniforms.  Lydia and her crew wrecked house all the way past the battlements and across the courtyard, coming at last to a great, old school Davinter fortress and as the Stonebear Avaar continued to battle the Jaws of Harkon Avaar, Lydia and her posse snuck inside the fortress.

Almost instantly Lydia was hit by how cold it was within the fort.  She cold feel the heat seeping from her body and knew that if she were to spend more than a few moments in the temple she would lose toes to frostbite at the very least.  Fortunately a great brazier stood a few feet from where they had entered the fortress.  Lydia and the other made haste for it and stood awhile basking in its warmth.  Further down the hall they heard someone intoning ancient verse.

Dorian rubbed his hands together over the fire that blazed in the brazier like a hobo with a steel drum fire and said, "Sounds like someone is trying to raise a demon dragon god and bring them to life.  I'd suggest we go and stop them, but it's really warm here and probably ice cold beyond this point."

"Dorian, we gotta do this.  There could be a magic sword out there for us to use to kill a horacrux dragon," Lydia said, "I know it's cold out there and your man junk could very well freeze right off, but we have to do it...for the world, and also so I can retire from being Inquisitor."

"Oh alright..." Dorian said, "but I'm going to complain about this for as long as you and I know each other."

The crew headed down the hallway, occasionally stopping at other braziers to warm their frosty bones, until at last they came to a huge chamber in which the boss Avaar of the Harkonites was dropping verses about dragons burninating the shit out of the Northlands...the lands in which Lydia and all her friends made their home.  The boss Avaar caught sight of them and let out a battle cry before running all up ons.  It was battle time!

Lydia and her party fought valiantly through not only the boss Avaar, but also the elements themselves.  It was hella cold in that chamber where they battled the leader of the Jaws of Harkon.  Lydia spun and whirled; her replica elven chopper deluxe inflicting a thousand cuts upon the Avaar chieftain, but he had his adrenaline pumping and not even a thousand cuts took him down.  Fortunately Dorian was sick and tired of being cold and blasted an inferno of fire all over the goddamn place which pretty much burned the Boss of the Jaws of Harkon alive.  He collapsed in a heap, totally dead.

And as the boss Avaar died, a voice cried out, "What ho?  I thank thee for thine valiant effort against yon douchebags."

Lydia looked up to see a Danish elf crouching nearby.  "I'm sorry, but who are you?"

"I am Armadillo, Inquisitor, and Hero of Orleans," the elf said, "Who pray tell art thou?"

"Oh man...he's an elfy-elf!" Sara explained, "That Professor's going to have a shit fit yeah?"

Lydia smirked at Sara and then replied to the other Inquisitor, "I'm Lydia Trevelyn and I'm the current Inquisitor.  You've been gone almost 800 years Armadillo.  I know that might be hard to believe, but I assure you it's the truth."

"Nay your tone says you speak true."

"But how?  How are you still alive?"

"When I came to this place to battle the dragon, Harkon, I found him far stronger than any predicted.  There was naught I could do to best him and so, I cast a spell upon him to cause him to slumber rather than ravage my homelands, but in casting said spell, I too, fell into a dreamless sleep..." the Danish Inquisitor said, and then after pausing a moment asked, "Doth thou happen to know what became of my love, dear Telana?"

"Sorry brah, she died while waiting for you," Lydia replied.

"I shall be with her soon, for while I slumbered I was outside of time, yet not immune to its ravages.  I fear I too shall soon move from this mortal coil, and so, from one Inquisitor to another, I ask of you a boon.  Do what I could not do and best this vile dragon, for a fear he too will awake shortly."

"Okay man, but I gotta ask do you have a magic sword or something we can use to kill a horacrux dragon?" Lydia said, "We've got our own shit going on and a magical sword is pretty much the only hope that we have."

"Sorry, but I am a mage and thus carried with me no sword," Armadillo said and them crumbled into mummy dust.

There then came a great roar as the dragon, Harkon, woke from its slumber and busted out of the temple and took flight.  A broad smile crossed Bull's face and he and Sara bumped fists.

"Fuck yeah...WE GET TO KILL A DRAGON!!!" Bull bellowed.

"I guess we do.  Hooray..." Lydia said sarcastically.

  **Commercial Break**

Lydia and her friends made their way out of the temple into the night air of the Frostfang Basin and for the first time since their arrival found it to be not sweltering.  In fact, Lydia was certain she could see her breath as she walked from the temple.  They would need to find where the dragon went.  Hopefully it had not gone anywhere near the Inquisition camp or Stonebear Keep.  A great roar sounded overhead and Lydia looked up to see the dragon demon god, Harkon, fly south.  Lydia started off after it.  She and her friends followed the great beast south, crossing hill and dale.  Through swamp and across a river towards the coast.

She hardly recognized the fisherman that she had saved from being cuckolded's shack for the entire thing was covered in jagged ice.  The water at the shore was frozen as well, leading out to a small island of ice heaps that Lydia did not recall existing the last time she had been in the area.  On the island sat the demon dragon god, Harkon, barfing ice cubes all over everything.  Lydia readied he sword and after flipping off the giant flying lizard monster, charged and proceeded to give it a Stone Cold Stunner.  The dragon bounced across the ice on it's ass before taking to the wing and flying over head.  Lydia heard it barf ice cubes from above, but summoned her force field before the first cube hit.  From within the force field she and her friends watched the cubes bounce back and slam into the god demon dragon that had just barfed them out.  Sara and Dorian blasted projectiles of their own at the monster while Bull and Lydia had to be content with making rude gestures from within the force field.

The dragon god demon, Harkon, crashed down into the ice before them right has the force field faded from existence.  Lydia and Bull charged forward, ready to fight it out.  Lydia was a cyclone of spinning ownage, cutting into the great beast's leg as Bull went head to head with its head.  And so went the battle.  The beast would take flight and Lydia an her companions would huddle within a force field lobbing missiles at the flying lizard while remaining impervious to its ice cube barf, and then when the creature landed, Bull and Lydia would wreck house on it melee style.

Soon the beast was dead, and the spirit of Harkon rose from the corpse of the dragon and vanished into the Fade.  Within the stomach of the dragon they did find a pretty rocking wizard stick, but found nothing close to being a magical horacrux dragon killing sword.  Lydia was more than a little disappointed.  The entire trip to the Basin had been a complete waste of time.

"Come on guys let's go say goodbye to the Stonebear Keep Avaar and then go back to Skyhold," Lydia said, barely concealing her disappointment with the entire situation.  She and her fellows then made their way back to Stonebear Keep and went to say goodbye to the chieftain, but when they got there she was super pumped up.

"Holy shit Inquisitor!  You wrecked house on that dragon and now our god Harkon can return to being a god instead of a lame ass god demon dragon.  We are forever in your debt and thus grant you a kick ass honorific."

"Uh thanks I guess.  Anyway we're heading back to our home base and just wanted to say goodbye before we bailed," Lydia replied.

"Wait!  Before you go there's a favor I must ask of you.  We have heard from some trial fans in our clan that you are one of the best judges to have ever rendered a verdict.  Sure, some are of the mind that Odette Corvette, was a more technically sound judge, but she lacked your flair for the ironic," the chieftain said, "We would like very much for you to judge Stuttgart."

"The bear?" Lydia asked in amazement.

"Yes.  Stuttgart should have, in accordance with Avaar tradition, fought to the death rather than allow herself to be captured by the Harkonites," the chieftain said, "and thus needs punishment."

"Hmmm....I _bearly_ understand your customs but will do my best to render a verdict that is not too _grizzly_ ," Lydia punned.  The chieftain groaned as Lydia continued, "Yes, Stuttgart, a list of your crimes shall be compiled and read to you daily for a week.  This shall make your life your life rather _unbearable_."

The chieftain groaned at the horrible puns once more before saying, "A challenge for our skalds to be certain, but it shall be done.  Again we thank you Inquisitor.  Know that you are your kinfolk shall always be welcome in Stonebear Keep."

Lydia bowed and made her way from the manor house.  Outside the Professor and Scout Harding stood, waiting.  The Professor was particularly animated, "So you discovered Armadillo's resting place I heard?"

"Buckles, please let me tell him yeah?" Sara shouted.

"Okay Sara."

An impish grin appeared on Sara's face and she began, "We talked to him yeah.  He was a wizard or some shit and put himself and that big dragon demon shit to sleep for like a million years, but guess what?  He wasn't a human that liked to rub bits with elves...that Armadillo guy was a real elfy-elf what with the face tats and everything yeah?"

"Does she speak true?" the Professor asked.

Lydia nodded, "Yeah, that's more or less the gist of it.  Dude was an elven mage.  That's going to fuck a lot of shit up isn't it?"

"You have no idea..."


	10. Dragon Age – S07E10 – All This Shit Is Weird

“So that entire, ‘go into the Frostfang Basin and defile the tomb of the last Inquisitor to find a magical sword,’ thing was kind of a bust,” Lydia said, her voice dripping with disappointment, “There was one small saving grace: we did discover that Inquisitor Armadillo and his ladyfriend were both elves, which I’m sure his quote unquote descendants in Orleans are going to absolutely love.”  
  
Josephine gasped, covering her mouth with her hand and asked, “You aren’t seriously thinking of letting that story spread are you?”  
  
“Why wouldn’t I?” Lydia asked, “It’s the truth and the dude deserves to be remembered for who he truly was. I don’t really care if that ruffles a few feathers. Like how shitty would it be if 400 years from now you were remembered as Joseph Montague?”  
  
“Ruffles a few feathers?! You could very well ruin one of the great noble houses of Orleans!” Josephine exclaimed.  
  
Lydia shrugged, “It’s not really important, what is important is we are out a magic sword and still need a way to wreck house on that horacrux dragon deal or we’ll never be able to beat Coprophilia.”  
  
Sideboob, witch of the wilds, and possessor of a most gloriously displayed sideboob, then spake, “Fear not Inquisitor, for the voices that now inhabit my head have spoken of another method the best that accursed fiend that I shall be able to manage. I do not believe Coprophilia will wait much longer to strike, so perhaps it is best if you ready your forces.”  
  
Cullen nodded in agreement. “Sideboob speaks true. Coprophilia will strike soon. Unfortunately we neither know where he is, nor have the manpower to defend Skyhold against him, should he chose to strike at us here as the bulk of our forces are still returning from the Arbor Wilds.”  
  
“So we have no idea where he actually is right now?” Lydia asked.  
  
Her master of spies, Leliana, frowned slightly, “None at all at the moment, but I have agents following several leads and we hope to know more within a few days where Coprophilia is hiding.”  
  
At precisely that moment through the window directly behind Leliana’s head, Lydia and Sideboob saw the remnants of the neon green sky tear over what once was Haven flashed and flared with neon green Fade shit.  
  
“Umm…I think I know where he’s hiding,” Lydia said, pointing out the window.  
  
“We won’t have time to ready our forces,” Cullen exclaimed.  
  
“I know that…Coprophilia knows that..and that’s why he won’t expect us to attack him now,” Lydia said, “I’ll take a small force and make haste for Haven at once and we’ll strike the bastard down once and for all!”  
  
**Commercial Break**  
  
  
Coprophilia scowled at the Inquisition soldiers standing before him in the ruins of Haven like an old man scowling at children who had climbed a fence into his backyard to retrieve an ill-kicked kickball. His face, as gross and Mel Gibson in The Man Without a Face-esque as ever, contorted into a sneer and he bellowed, “Bow before Coprophilia!”  
  
A random Inquisition foot soldier spat in Coprophilia’s half a face and shouted, “I’ll never bow to you fiend!”  
  
The magister cum darkspawn looked hella pissed…but before he could wreck house on the nameless, albeit defiant, Inquisition footman, Lydia Trevelyn and her crew of roughnecks appeared looking even more pissed than Coprophilia himself looked.  
  
“Coprophilia!” Lydia bellowed, “We’re shutting you down...permanently!”  
  
“I shall crush you! I shall crush all! I will create a sea of fire that sweeps over Thedas smiting all those who oppose me!” Coprophilia shouted at no one in particular, "I shall tear the heavens asunder and flood your pathetic cities with demonic hordes!  The rivers will run red with the blood of the fallen!"  
  
“Jesus Christ almighty!  Dude you talk waaaaaay too fucking much,” Lydia said with a smirk, “I like my evil overlords to be a little less gabby and a bit more proactive, so let’s fight it out and get this over with. I’ve got an elven lass to rib bits with and you’re kind of preventing that from happening.”  
  
Sword in hand, Lydia then charged forward, a tornado of violence slashing at Coprophilia. Lydia didn’t need to look to know that the Iron Bull was beside her, pounding on the one time Davinter magister with a shield and a war axe. A hail of flames and arrows descended upon Coprophilia courtesy of Dorian and Sara, causing the disgusting melt of a man to monologue some more.  
  
“You shall all die terrible deaths, bathed in dragon’s fire and then a dragon will eat you and after digesting you the dragon will shit out your bones and then I will have my minions collect those bones, clean them off and then fashion a throne of bones out of your bones Inquisitor! MWAHAHA!” as he monologued the ruins of Haven began to raise up into the air, great heaps of stone and castle soon hung in the sky like clouds and as the Man Without a Face cackled maniacally, his goddamn horacrux dragon screeched a horrible screech and swooped into the scene.  
  
Lydia held her breath and prayed that Sideboob’s plan would work. If the witch’s plan didn’t work this battle would probably go down in history as the worst battle ever waged between a darkspawn magister and a crew of mages, Templars, Grey Wardens, dwarves, elves, lesbians, Orleansians and Feldsparians in the history of all Thedas. The screaming dragon came ever closer as Lydia counted in her head: one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand…  
  
There came a great screech as a second dragon swooped down from on high and slammed into the horacrux dragon. It was Sideboob…in the form of a dragon, a skill she had apparently learned from the Well of Sorrow voices in her head. Lydia had been rather skeptical when she first heard of the plan, but she had seen the witch transform into a crow once, and Leliana insisted that when the two had traveled together with Odette Corvette during the Fifth Blight, Sideboob frequently transformed into a bear and thus opined that, “Maybe a dragon isn’t beyond her skill level…she is a pretty good mage after all.”  
  
Lydia smiled as the two dragons pinwheeled through the air locked in combat, but Corprophilia did not smile. The disgusting magister darkspawn wannabe god was all like, “Aw shit, I did not see that coming…I’m outta here,” before teleporting atop the ruined castle of Haven.  
  
From the safety of the buttress he found himself atop, Corprophilia’s confidence returned and his voice boomed like a rock and roll saxophone, “A fiery death awaits you all! Bow now and serve me and perhaps I shall use your skull as a chamber pot Trevelyn! You were a mistake! And aberration that should not exist!  You are nothing more than a petty sneakthief!  An interloper who crossed paths with a god!”  
  
“Don’t talk shit about my Buckles, Corif-a-shit!” Sara bellowed as she launched a volley of poisoned arrows up at the magister who looked like a half melted candle. The arrows found their mark and Coprophilia cried out in poisoned pain.  
  
Lydia motioned to her crew and was like, “Come on! We have to get up there and finish this Philly cheesesteak looking motherfucker off!"  
  
  
_Coprophilia_  
  
Together with Sara, Bull and Dorian Lydia made her way up into the ruins of Haven. As they ascended crumbling staircases towards the bellowing asshole she looked them over, none had more than minor cuts and bruises from the battle and her potion satchel was still full. Was it possible that this alleged “god” was somehow less mighty than the random Avaar Hammer Brothers who had wrecked house on Lydia and her friends some weeks earlier? She smirked and she made emerged on the roof and charged straight towards Coprophilia.  
  
The magister tried to shoot some gross beams at her, but Lydia dodged and got all up in his grill with a massive leaping chop that knocked the piece of shit Davinter on his ass. Coprophilia was mad quick though and back on his feet in a flash, once more trying to beamfuck the shit out of Lydia, but his beam fuckery was interrupted by a great beast slamming into the roof of the now floating fortress.  It was his horacrux dragon, looking worse for wear.  Sideboob had wounded the shit out of it, but it would be up to Lydia and her crew to finished it off.  
  
“Bull! You and Dorian stay on Coprophilia! Sara, come on! We’ve got a dragon to kill!” Lydia shouted, rushing towards the gigantic horacrux lizard. Behind her she could hear Bull complain, “Aw…Boss, I wanted to kill the dragon!”  
but she knew Bull would do what was necessary.  
  
Lydia ignored him and looked Sara in the eyes. Sara met her gaze and smiled as she nocked an arrow and drew her bow to full. “I love you Buckles!” she shouted and loosed the arrow.  
  
The Power of Love® caused her shot to fly straight and true, and the arrow pierced the dragon’s eye causing the great beast to thrash and howl. Lydia leapt towards it and with one mighty blow cut the monster’s head clear from its shoulders. A fountain of blood sprayed from the beasts flailing neck as it died, but Lydia and Sara could not savor their moment of triumph, for beams of red shit blasted all around them from Coprophilia.  
  
“Come on Sara…we’ve got one more asshole to stop and then this is all over!” Lydia said, and together she and Sara ran towards Coprophilia to aid Dorian and Iron Bull.  
  
Together the young lovers charged the disgusting slab of wizard shit, red lyrium chunks, and Davinter douchelord, a frenzy of swings great swords, poisoned arrows and the Power of Love®, but Coprophilia's hate boner was ferocious and he would have overcome Lydia and Sara's onslaught had it not been for Bull and Dorian, for the Power of Love® flowed through their hearts as well, and with their love added to the love of Sara and Lydia, the Power of Love® proved too much for the melted mess of a Davinter douchelord.  Lydia saw Coprophilia stagger and with a mighty leap brought he replica elven chopper deluxe crashing into his disgusting wreck of a face, dropping him to his knees.  
  
"You...you cannot best me..." Coprophilia wheezed, "I am...a...god..."  
  
"Whatever scumfuck!  Eat it!" Lydia shouted and blasted the fallen god wannabe with the blastingest blast of neon green hand blast that she had ever blasted.  There was a great howl as Coprophilia was reduced to nothingness.  Exhausted, Lydia dropped to her knees and with a smile uttered, "Ate it..."  
  
He was gone.  The fiend who had occupied her thoughts for the better part of a year, who had changed her life so irrevocably, was gone.  Slowly Lydia rose to her feet.  Surprisingly it was Solas of all people who approached the smoldering crater where Lydia had used the Power of Love® to wreck house on Coprophilia once and for all.  Lydia watched as the bald headed elf walked past her to the smoking spot where the Davinter douchelord had stood but a moment ago.  Solas knelt and picked up the shattered chunks that remained of Coprophilia's orb.  
  
"The orb...it's broken," he said, a forlorn look upon his face.  
  
"Whatever mang.  Fuck the orb.  Coprophilia's dead and that's all that matters.  Look, the sky...it's pretty much healed.  We did it dude.  We saved Thedas and that's what matters."  
  
"Does it?  Something was lost here this day that will never again be seen on Thedas..." Solas said, and then, with shattered orb still in hand, he stood and walked off.  Lydia watched him go.  Something about the entire thing seemed strange, almost like a dream.  Had Solas always gone about it toeless socks?  Why was he so interested in that smashed orb?  
  
She quickly put thoughts of the smug elf from her mind as Inquisition members she actually liked appeared and a great cheer that rose to the scarred sky for "Lydia 'The Inquisitor' Trevelyn."  
  
**Commercial Break**  
  
  
The great hall of the Skyhold Dream Castle was decorated in the colors of the Inquisition and great tables lined the length of the hall with food heaped high atop them.  Kegs of dwarven mead, I.P.A., and even a cask of Amontillado had been brought up from the wine cellars and all throughout the hall was the sound of merrymaking.  Feldsparians and Orleansians joked with each other while mages and Templars drunkenly made out with each other and sneaked off to barracks for hookups they were sure to regret in the morning.  
  
All of Lydia's companions were here as well, save for, of course, Solas, who had disappeared from Haven shortly after Coprophilia's demise.  Lydia took this moment to speak with them all, for it felt to her, if not the ending, at least an ending.  Some, Cole and Bull among them were content to continue on with the Inquisition.  Others, Dorian and Cassandra chief among them, were ready to put their time with the Inquisition behind them and return to their lives from a time before they met Lydia Trevelyn and were pulled into the undertow that seemed to follow in her wake.  And then there was Vivian, who apparently had been named Divine Lady Pope of all Thedas.  This irked Lydia most of all since it was quite clear that while Lydia, Sara, Dorian and Bull were off saving the world from almost certain annihilation, Vivian had used the Inquisition and Lydia Trevelyn's name and political clout to secure for herself the Sunburst Throne.  Lydia thought she would be terrible for the job and would have preferred Cassandra or Leliana to have been elected to the position.    
  
Many people wanted to bump fists and chat with Lydia following her great victory, but there was but one person she wanted to speak with, and that was of course, Sara.  She found her beloved lounging at a table with a comically oversized turkey leg in one hand and one of those giant Oktoberfest steins filled with some sort of mystery brew in the other.  She smiled broadly when she saw Lydia and shouted, "Buckles!  Finally a right proper party yeah?  Should have kicked that Coripa-tit in his ball ages ago right?  I'm glad all the serious scowly shit is over and people can get back to living and drinking and rubbing bits together and all the good things in life yeah?  You did that you know?  Just promise me you're not going to go all weird and nobly now..."  
  
"Sara, I couldn't.  Not anymore.  You kept me grounded this whole time...you were always there beside me, a reminder of why I was doing this at all...because I love you."  
  
Sara leaned in close and whispered, "Let's ditch this party and go up to your room and celebrate another way..."  
  
Lydia nodded and together she and Sara walked towards the door to her apartments.  Sara true to form then turned and bellowed to the assembled crowd of Chantry sisters, noblemen, Grey Wardens, dwarves, Danes, chevaliers, and Cole, "Oi, we're going up to her room to rub bits together so it might be a little bit noisy yeah?  I'd say I was sorry, but I'm totally not...anyway Bull, don't drink all that mead, I'm going to be thirsty as shit when I come back down yeah?"  
  
There was a smattering of applause and Bull raised he mug towards Sara who bowed slightly.  Sara then took Lydia by the arm and lead her up to the bedroom...  
  
The next morning Lydia and stood on her balcony looking out at the sky.  A single thin scar of neon green shit remained, a reminder of what evil lurked in Thedas.    
  
"We've done so much Sara, but there's still a lot of work to do," Lydia said, gazing out across the mountains.  
  
"And I'll be there to help you with it my love," Sara replied before pausing in thought.  
  
"What is is Sara?"  
  
"You wanna throw the bed off the balcony?"  
  
**End Credits**  
  
  
Flemith stood before a great eluvian, its mists swirling behind her.  She was awaiting an old friend, one she had not seen in quite sometime.  Almost as if on cue a second eluvian stirred to life and her friend emerged.  She greeted him in elven before reverting back to Thedasian English, "Well met Fen Harel...how many ages has it been, Dread Wolf, since we last stood face to face?"  
  
"Too long, Mythral...or do you wish to be called Flemith still?" came the reply from Fen Harel.  
  
"Mythral is fine.  Perhaps I should ask the same question of you Solas?" she replied.  
  
"Do not call me by that name any longer...it has served its purpose!" Fen Harel exclaimed venomously as emerged from the shadows all bald and without shoes, still clutching a ruined orb in one hand.  
  
"I would have like to meet you again under better circumstances than this, but you've done goofed," Mythral said dismissively, "Honestly, to give your orb to Coprophilia...what did you expect to happen?"  
  
"Not this," Fen Harel said motioning to the ruined orb in his hand, "but it matters little, my old friend, for I have a new plan now."  
  
He stepped forward, close to Mythral and blue magically shit surrounded the woman once known as Flemith.  Her skin darkened to a black as black as pitch and the life seemed to drain from her eyes.  Mythral's body collapsed at Fen Harel's feet.  "I am very sorry my friend, but I have much work yet to do," the elf once known as Solas said as he stepped over the body of Mythral into the eluvian and vanished.  
  
---  
   
  
**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Director's Commentary: Holy fuck that ending!  I was legit shook and screamed at my TV, "SOLAS YOU FUCKER!"  Not only had he been completely responsible for all the wrongs of the game that I had just spent 130 some odd hours righting he had apparently been the party responsible for Merrill's perpetually messy house in Dragon Age 2, and that, dear readers, is not a thing I can easily forgive...


End file.
